this meeting over as swiftly and quietly
as she could, and high words would not help.

"It's true," she admitted meekly. "I know very little."

Joan looked very lovely as she stood nervously drumming with her gloved
fingers on a little table which stood between them, all her assurance
gone.

Mario Escobar lived always on the whirling edge of passion. The least
extra leap of the water caught him and drew him in. He gazed at Joan,
and the computing look which cast up her charms made her suddenly hot
from head to foot. The good-looking, pretentious fool whom it had been
amusing to exhibit amidst the black frowns of her circle had suddenly
become exquisitely desirable for herself as a prize, with her beauty,
her dainty care to tend it, and her delicious clothes. She would now be
a real credit! Escobar took a step towards her.

"After all," he said, "we were such good friends. We had little private
interests which we did not share with other people. Surely it was
natural that I should wish to see you again."

Mario was speaking smoothly enough now. His voice, his eyes actually
caressed her. She was at pains to repress a shiver of physical
repulsion. But she remembered his letter very clearly. It had expressed
no mere wish to see her. It had claimed a right with a vague threat of
making trouble if the right were not conceded. She had recognised the
right, not out of the fear of the threat so much--although that weighed
with her, as out of a longing to have done with him for good and all.
Instinct had told her that this was the last type of man to find favour
in Harry Luttrell's eyes, that she herself would be lowered from her
high pedestal in his heart, if he knew of the false friendship.

"Well, I agreed to see you," she replied. "But I have to go back to the
ball. Will you please to be quick?"

"The time and the place were of your own choice."

"My choice!" Joan answered. "I had no choice. A girl amongst visitors in
a country house--when is she free? When is she alone? She can keep to
her room--yes! But that's all her liberty. Let her go out, there will be
some one at her side."

"If she is like you--no doubt," said Escobar, and again he smiled at her
covetously. Joan shook the compliment off her with a hitch of her
shoulders.

"We could have met in a hundred places," Mario continued.

"I could have come to call on you as we arranged."

"No!" cried Joan with more vigour than wisdom in her voice. She had a
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