wer
it.

A tall man entered--coughing.

"Beastly night, Nannie!" he said, as soon as the cough would let him.
"Don't suit my style. Well?--how are you? Had the flu, like everybody
else?"

"Not yet, Mr. Roger--though it's been going through the house. Shall I
take your coat?"

"You'd better not. I'm too shabby underneath."

"Sir Richard's in the country, Mr. Roger."

"Oh, so her ladyship's alone? Well, that's how I generally find her,
isn't it?"

But Nannie--with her eye on the stairs--was not going to allow him any
lingering in the hall. She led him quickly to the drawing-room, opened
it, and closed it behind him. Then she herself retreated into a small
smoking-den at the farther end of the hall, and sat there, without a
light, with the door open--watching.

Roger Delane instinctively straightened himself to his full height as he
entered his sister's drawing-room. His overcoat, though much worn, was of
an expensive make and cut; he carried the Malacca cane which had been his
companion in the Brookshire roads; and the eyeglass that he adjusted as
he caught sight of his sister completed the general effect of shabby
fashion. His manner was jaunty and defiant.

"Well, Marianne," he said, pausing some yards from her. "You don't seem
particularly glad to see me. Hullo!--has Dick been buying some more
china?"

And before his sister could say anything, he had walked over to a table
covered with various bric-a-brac, where, taking up a fine Nankin vase, he
looked closely at the marks on its base.

Lady Winton flushed with anger.

"I think you had better leave the china alone, Roger. I have only got a
very few minutes. What do you want? Money, I suppose--as usual! And yet I
warned you in my last letter that you would do this kind of thing once
too often, and that we were _not_ going to put up with it!" She struck
the table beside her with her glove.

Delane put down the china and surveyed her.

"The vase is Ming all right--better stuff than Dick generally buys. I
congratulate him. Well, I'm sorry for you, my dear Marianne--but you
_are_ my sister--and you can't help yourself!"

He looked at her, half-smiling, with a quiet bravado which enraged her.

"Don't talk like that, Roger! Tell me directly what it is you want. You
seem to think you can force me to see you at any time, whatever I may be
doing. But--"

"Your last letter was 'a bit thick'--you see--it provoked me," said
Delane calmly. "Of course you can