face, under its deference, betrayed
his sharp annoyance at finding himself alone with Miss Lucy.

"Pardon me," he said, "I thought that Mrs. Tailleur was here."

"Mrs. Tailleur asked me to tell you that she cannot see you. She has
gone to her room."

"To her room?"

He stared at her, and his face loosened in a sudden incredulity and
dismay.

"Did she tell you she was going there?"

"Yes. She was very tired."

"But--she was here not half an hour ago. She couldn't have gone without
my seeing her."

"She went out," said Jane faintly, "by the window."

"She couldn't get to her room without going through the hall. I've been
there all the time on the seat by the stairs."

They looked at each other. The seat by the stairs commanded all ways in
and out, the entrance of the passage, and the door of the sitting-room,
and the portiere of the lounge.

"What do you think?" he said.

"I think that she has not gone far. But if she goes, it is you who will
have driven her away."

"Forgive me if I remind you that it is not I who have given her up."

"It was you," said Jane quietly, "who helped to ruin her."

His raised eyebrows expressed an urbane surprise at the curious
frankness of her charge. And with a delicate gesture of his hand he
repudiated it and waved it away.

"My dear lady, you are alarmed and you are angry, consequently you are
unjust. Whatever poor Kitty may have done I am not responsible."

"You are responsible. It's you, and men like you, who have dragged her
down. You took advantage of her weakness, of her very helplessness.
You've made her so that she can't believe in a man's goodness and trust
herself to it."

He smiled, still with that untroubled urbanity, on the small flaming
thing as she arraigned him.

"And you consider me responsible for that?" he said.

Their eyes met. "My brother is here," said she. "Would you like to see
him?"

"It might be as well, perhaps. If you can find him."

She left him, and he waited five minutes, ten minutes, twenty.

She returned alone. All her defiance had gone from her, and the face
that she turned to him was white with fear.

"She is not here," she said. "She went out--by that window--and she has
not come in. We've searched the hotel, and we can't find her."

"And you have _not_ found your brother?"

"He has gone out to look for her."

She sat down by the table, turning her face away and screening it from
him with her hand.

Marston gave one