where they had been
sitting.

Strefford gave his careless shrug. "Well, my dear, you can hardly expect
me to agree, for after all it was to Ellie I owed the luck of being so
long alone with you in Venice. If she and Algie hadn't prolonged their
honeymoon at the villa--"

He stopped abruptly, and looked at Susy. She was conscious that every
drop of blood had left her face. She felt it ebbing away from her heart,
flowing out of her as if from all her severed arteries, till it seemed
as though nothing were left of life in her but one point of irreducible
pain.

"Ellie--at your villa? What do you mean? Was it Ellie and Bockheimer
who--?"

Strefford still stared. "You mean to say you didn't know?"

"Who came after Nick and me...?" she insisted.

"Why, do you suppose I'd have turned you out otherwise? That beastly
Bockheimer simply smothered me with gold. Ah, well, there's one good
thing: I shall never have to let the villa again! I rather like the
little place myself, and I daresay once in a while we might go there for
a day or two.... Susy, what's the matter?" he exclaimed.

She returned his stare, but without seeing him. Everything swam and
danced before her eyes.

"Then she was there while I was posting all those letters for her--?"

"Letters--what letters? What makes you look so frightfully upset?"

She pursued her thought as if he had not spoken. "She and Algie
Bockheimer arrived there the very day that Nick and I left?"

"I suppose so. I thought she'd told you. Ellie always tells everybody
everything."

"She would have told me, I daresay--but I wouldn't let her."

"Well, my dear, that was hardly my fault, was it? Though I really don't
see--"

But Susy, still blind to everything but the dance of dizzy sparks before
her eyes, pressed on as if she had not heard him. "It was their motor,
then, that took us to Milan! It was Algie Bockheimer's motor!" She did
not know why, but this seemed to her the most humiliating incident in
the whole hateful business. She remembered Nick's reluctance to use the
motor-she remembered his look when she had boasted of her "managing."
The nausea mounted to her throat.

Strefford burst out laughing. "I say--you borrowed their motor? And you
didn't know whose it was?"

"How could I know? I persuaded the chauffeur... for a little tip....
It was to save our railway fares to Milan... extra luggage costs so
frightfully in Italy...."

"Good old Susy! Well done! I can see you d