* * *

'Mother, whatever do you think?' cried Millicent, running in eagerly in
advance of Ethel at ten o'clock. 'Lucy Turner's sister died to-day, and
so she can't sing in the opera, and I am to have her part if I can learn
it in three weeks.'

'What is her part?' Leonora asked, as though waking up.

'Why, mother, you know! Patience, of course! Isn't it splendid?'

'Where are father and Mr. Twemlow? Ethel inquired, falling into a chair.

CHAPTER V

THE CHANCE

Leonora was aware that she had tamed one of the lions which menaced her
husband's path; she could not conceive that Arthur Twemlow, whatever his
mysterious power over John, would find himself able to exercise it now;
Twemlow was a friend of hers, and so disarmed. She wished to say proudly
to John: 'I neither know nor wish to know the nature of the situation
between you and Arthur Twemlow. But be at ease. He is no longer
dangerous. I have arranged it.' The thing was impossible to be said; she
was bound to leave John in ignorance; she might not even hint.
Nevertheless, Leonora's satisfaction in this triumph, her pleasure in
the mere memory of the intimate talk by the fire, her innocent joyous
desire to see Twemlow again soon, emanated from her in various subtle
ways, and the household was thereby soothed back into a feeling of
security about John. Leonora ignored, perhaps deliberately, that
Stanway had still before him the peril of financial embarrassment, that
he was mortgaging the house, and that his colloquies with David Dain
continued to be frequent and obviously disconcerting. When she saw him
nervous, petulant, preoccupied, she attributed his condition solely to
his thought of the one danger which she had secretly removed. She had a
strange determined impulse to be happy and gay.

An episode at an extra Monday night rehearsal of the Amateur Operatic
Society seemed to point to the prevalence of certain sinister rumours
about Stanway's condition. Milly, inspired by dreams of the future, had
learnt her part perfectly in five days. She sang and acted with
magnificent assurance, and with a vivid theatrical charm which awoke
enthusiasm in the excitable breasts of the male chorus. Harry Burgess
lost his air of fatigued worldliness, and went round naively demanding
to be told whether he had not predicted this miracle. Even the conductor
was somewhat moved.

'She'll do, by gad!' said that man of few illusions to his crony the
accompa