id. "You will find me, I
think, quite as trustworthy and devoted to your interests as my father."

She smiled slightly. She recognized exactly his quandary, and it amused
her. The slightest suggestion of menace in his manner would be to give
the lie to himself.

"I am coming down this afternoon," she said, "to go through the safes.
Please be there in case I want you. You will not forget, in case you
should hear anything of Mr. Macheson, that I desire to be informed."

He took his leave humiliated and angry. He had started the game with a
wrong move--retrievable, perhaps, but annoying. Wilhelmina passed into
the library, where Lady Peggy, in a wonderful morning robe, was leaning
back in an easy-chair dictating letters to Captain Austin.

"You dear woman!" she exclaimed, "don't interrupt us, will you? I have
found an ideal secretary, writes everything I tell him, and spells quite
decently considering his profession. My conscience is getting lighter
every moment."

"And my heart heavier," Austin grumbled. "A most flirtatious
correspondence yours."

She laughed softly.

"My next shall be to my dressmaker," she declared. "Such a charming
woman, and so trustful. Behave yourself nicely, and you shall go with me
to call on her next week, and see her mannikins. By the bye, Wilhelmina,
am I hostess or are you?"

"You, by all means," Wilhelmina answered. "I shall go to-morrow or the
next day. Is any one coming to lunch?"

"His Grace, I fancy--no one else."

Wilhelmina yawned.

"Where is Gilbert?" she asked.

"Asleep on the lawn last time I saw him."

"No one shooting, then?"

"We're going to beat up the home turnips after lunch," Captain Austin
answered. "It's rather an off day with us. Gilbert is nursing his
leg--fancies he has rheumatism coming."

She strolled out into the garden, but she avoided the spot where Gilbert
Deyes lounged in an easy-chair, reading the paper and smoking
cigarettes, with his leg carefully arranged on a garden chair in front
of him. She took the winding path which skirted the kitchen gardens and
led to the green lane, along which the carts passed to the home farm.
She felt that what she was doing was in the nature of an experiment,
she was yielding again to that most astonishing impulse which once
before had taken her so completely by surprise. She passed out of the
gate and along the lane. She began to climb the hill. About the success
of her experiment she no longer had any doubt. H