dance was," he returned. "I merely took the
opportunity of revising my toilet, and getting rid of that rather
distinctive overcoat, which I shall call for now. They're not too
particular at such stages of such proceedings, but I've no doubt I
should have seen someone I knew if I had none right in. I might even
have had a turn, if only I had been less uneasy about you, Bunny."

"It was like you to come back to help me out," said I. "But to lie to
me, and to inveigle me with your lies into that house of all
houses--that was not like you, Raffles--and I never shall forgive it or
you!"

Raffles took my arm again. We were near the High Street gates of
Palace Gardens, and I was too miserable to resist an advance which I
meant never to give him an opportunity to repeat.

"Come, come, Bunny, there wasn't much inveigling about it," said he. "I
did my level best to leave you behind, but you wouldn't listen to me."

"If you had told me the truth I should have listened fast enough," I
retorted. "But what's the use of talking? You can boast of your own
adventures after you bolted. You don't care what happened to me."

"I cared so much that I came back to see."

"You might have spared yourself the trouble! The wrong had been done.
Raffles--Raffles--don't you know who she was?"

It was my hand that gripped his arm once more.

"I guessed," he answered, gravely enough even for me.

"It was she who saved me, not you," I said. "And that is the bitterest
part of all!"

Yet I told him that part with a strange sad pride in her whom I had
lost--through him--forever. As I ended we turned into High Street; in
the prevailing stillness, the faint strains of the band reached us from
the Empress Rooms; and I hailed a crawling hansom as Raffles turned
that way.

"Bunny," said he, "it's no use saying I'm sorry. Sorrow adds insult in
a case like this--if ever there was or will be such another! Only
believe me, Bunny, when I swear to you that I had not the smallest
shadow of a suspicion that she was in the house."

And in my heart of hearts I did believe him; but I could not bring
myself to say the words.

"You told me yourself that you had written to her in the country," he
pursued.

"And that letter!" I rejoined, in a fresh wave of bitterness: "that
letter she had written at dead of night, and stolen down to post, it
was the one I have been waiting for all these days! I should have got
it to-morrow. Now I shall never g