le got
to say to her about Harry Luttrell? But Stella resumed her faltering
discourse and the sense of her words penetrated at last to Joan's brain
and amazed her.

Joan was to leave Harry Luttrell alone.

"You are quite young," said Stella, "only twenty. What does he matter to
you? You have everything in front of you. With your looks and your
twenty years you can choose where you will. You have lovers already----"

"I?" Joan interrupted.

"Mario Escobar."

Joan repeated the name with such a violence of scorn that for a moment
Stella Croyle was silenced.

"Mario Escobar!"

"He was here with you a moment ago."

Joan answered quietly and quite distinctly:

"I wish he were dead!"

Stella Croyle fell back upon her first declaration.

"You must leave my Wub alone."

Joan laughed aloud, harshly and without any merriment. She checked
herself with an effort lest she should go on laughing, and her laughter
turn uncontrollably into hysteria and tears. Here was Mrs. Croyle, a
grown woman, standing in front of her like a mutinous obstinate child,
looking like one too, talking like one and bidding Joan leave her Wub
alone. Whence did she get that ridiculous name? It was all degrading and
grotesque.

"Your Wub! Your Wub!" she cried in a heat. "Yes, I am only twenty, and
probably I am quite wrong and stupid. But it seems to me horrible that
we two women should be wrangling over a man neither of us had met a week
ago. I'll have no more of it."

She flung towards the window, but Stella Croyle cried out, "A week ago!"
and the cry brought her to a stop. Joan turned and looked doubtfully at
Mrs. Croyle. After all, that ridiculous label had not been pasted on to
Harry Luttrell as a result of a week's acquaintance. Harry Luttrell had
certainly talked to Stella through the greater part of an evening, his
first evening in the house, but they had hardly been together at all
since then. Joan came back slowly into the room.

"So you knew Colonel Luttrell before this week?"

"We were great friends a few years ago."

It was disturbing to Joan that Harry Luttrell had never spoken to her of
this friendship. Was it possible that Stella had a claim upon him of
which she herself knew nothing? She sat down at a table in front of Mrs.
Croyle.

"Tell me," she said.

Once, long ago, upon the deck of the _Dragonfly_ at Stockholm, Stella
had cried out to Harry Luttrell, "Oh, what a cruel mistake you made when
you went out of your wa