naturally, I don't want _you_ to get entangled with a
girl of that sort."

Miles picked up his hat and stick. "I wish you hadn't told me," he
groaned. "I don't think a bit less highly of her, but you've made _me_
feel such a low-down brute, I can't bear it. Good-bye--I've no doubt you
did it for the best ... but----" And Miles fairly ran from the room.

Mrs. Trent drummed with her fingers on the table and looked thoughtful.
"It was quite time somebody interfered," she reflected. And then she
remembered with annoyance that she had not found out the name of Meg's
employer.

Miles strode through Kensington Gore and past Knightsbridge, when he
turned down Sloane Street till he came to a fencing school he
frequented. Here he went in and had a strenuous half-hour with the
instructor, but nothing served to restore his peace of mind. He was
angry and hurt and horribly worried. If it was true, if the whole
miserable story was true, then he knew that something had been taken
from him. Something he had cherished in that dim, secret corner of his
heart. Its truth or untruth did not affect his feeling for Meg. But if
it were true, then he had irretrievably lost something intangible, yet
precious. Young men like Miles never mention ideals, but that's not to
say that in some very hidden place they don't exist, like buried
treasure.

All the shrewd Yorkshire strain in him shouted that he must set this
doubt at rest. That whatever was to be his action in the future he must
know and face the truth. All the delicacy, the fine feeling, the
sensitiveness he got from his mother, made him loathe any investigation
of the kind, and his racial instincts battled together and made him very
miserable indeed.

When he left the fencing school, he turned into Hyde Park. The Row was
beginning to fill, and suddenly he came upon his second cousin, Lady
Penelope Pottinger, sitting all alone on a green chair with another
empty one beside it. Miles dropped into the empty chair. He liked Lady
Pen. She was always downright and sometimes very amusing. Moreover she
took an intelligent interest in dogs, and knew Amber Guiting and its
inhabitants. So Miles dexterously led the conversation round to Jan and
Wren's End.

Lady Pen was looking very beautiful that afternoon. She wore a
broad-leaved hat which did not wholly conceal her glorious hair. Hair
the same colour as certain short feathery rings that framed a pale,
pathetic little face that haunted him.