ment.

"Heavens!" she exclaimed. "Oliver Hilditch's wife!"

"I can't help that," he declared, a little doggedly. "She's had a
miserable time, I know. She was married to a scamp. I'm not quite
sure that her father isn't as bad a one. Those things don't make any
difference."

"They wouldn't with you," she said softly. "Tell me, did you say
anything to her last night?"

"I did," he replied. "I began when we were out alone together. She gave
me no encouragement to speak of, but at any rate she knows."

Lady Cynthia leaned a little forward in her place.

"Do you know where she is now?"

He was a little startled.

"Down at the cottage, I suppose. The butler told me that she never rose
before midday."

"Then for once the butler was mistaken," his companion told him.
"Margaret Hilditch left at six o'clock this morning. I saw her in
travelling clothes get into the car and drive away."

"She left the cottage this morning before us?" Francis repeated, amazed.

"I can assure you that she did," Lady Cynthia insisted. "I never sleep,
amongst my other peculiarities," she went on bitterly, "and I was lying
on a couch by the side of the open window when the car came for her. She
stopped it at the bend of the avenue--so that it shouldn't wake us up, I
suppose. I saw her get in and drive away."

Francis was silent for several moments. Lady Cynthia watched him
curiously.

"At any rate," she observed, "in whatever mood she went away this
morning, you have evidently succeeded in doing what I have never seen
any one else do--breaking through her indifference. I shouldn't
have thought that anything short of an earthquake would have stirred
Margaret, these days."

"These days?" he repeated quickly. "How long have you known her?"

"We were at school together for a short time," she told him. "It was
while her father was in South America. Margaret was a very different
person in those days."

"However was she induced to marry a person like Oliver Hilditch?"
Francis speculated.

His companion shrugged her shoulders.

"Who knows?" she answered indifferently. "Are you going to drop me?"

"Wherever you like."

"Take me on to Grosvenor Square, if you will, then," she begged, "and
deposit me at the ancestral mansion. I am really rather annoyed about
Margaret," she went on, rearranging her veil. "I had begun to have hopes
that you might have revived my taste for normal things."

"If I had had the slightest intimation--" he murm