house on Cardew Way seemed more and more dream-like,
and that quality of remoteness was accentuated by the fact that she
had not been able to talk to Elinor. She had telephoned more than once
during the week, but a new maid had answered. Mrs. Doyle was out. Mrs.
Doyle was unable to come to the telephone. The girl was a foreigner,
with something of Woslosky's burr in her voice.

Lily had not left the house since her return. During that family
conclave which had followed her arrival, a stricken thing of few words
and long anxious pauses, her grandfather had suggested that. He had
been curiously mild with her, her grandfather. He had made no friendly
overtures, but he had neither jibed nor sneered.

"It's done," he had said briefly. "The thing now is to keep her out of
his clutches." He had turned to her. "I wouldn't leave the house for few
days, Lily."

It was then that Willy Cameron had gone. Afterwards she thought that
he must have been waiting, patiently protective, to see how the old man
received her.

Her inability to reach Elinor began to dismay her, at last. There was
something sinister about it, and finally Howard himself went to the
Doyle house. Lily had come back on Thursday, and on the following
Tuesday he made his call, timing it so that Doyle would probably be away
from home. But he came back baffled.

"She was not at home," he said. "I had to take the servant's word for
it, but I think the girl was lying."

"She may be ill. She almost never goes out."

"What possible object could they have in concealing her illness?" Howard
said impatiently.

But he was very uneasy, and what Lily had told him since her return only
increased his anxiety. The house was a hotbed of conspiracy, and for her
own reasons Elinor was remaining there. It was no place for a sister
of his. But Elinor for years had only touched the outer fringes of
his life, and his days were crowded with other things; the increasing
arrogance of the strikers, the utter uselessness of trying to make
terms with them, his own determination to continue to fight his futile
political campaign. He put her out of his mind.

Then, at the end of another week, a curious thing happened. Anthony and
Lily were in the library. Old Anthony without a club was Old Anthony
lost, and he had developed a habit, at first rather embarrassing to the
others, of spending much of his time downstairs. He was no sinner turned
saint. He still let the lash of his tongue pl