ps at last he had found a girl he was
willing to let himself fall in love with came a doubt, a cautious
warning to hesitate, not to go too fast. She was delightful, he firmly
believed her to be transparent and sincere, but men have been taken in
only too easily when their senses have been stirred as his had been
to-night. No, he must not rush things; he must wait a little and be
sure, not so much of himself as of her; he must be convinced that she
cared for him, that she was not merely dazzled by what he could give
her one day.... That was the drawback of having money, if only in
prospect. Already, for some years in fact, he had been pursued by
mercenary maidens and their mothers. He had a rooted aversion to the
whole breed, and a latent fear that one day he would be taken in after
all. He knew himself to be impressionable and impulsive; still, behind
these dangerous qualities lay a certain hard, deliberate common sense
that had saved him in more than one perilous situation. Sternly he
informed himself that he had known Esther Rowe about three days. In
short, he must not be a fool.

Something, the champagne perhaps, had made him very thirsty. Finding
his bottle of Evian water almost empty, he decided to explore the
kitchen region below to secure another. He knew where the mineral
waters were kept--in a small cupboard next to the wine-cellar. He
sallied forth and descended the back stairs very quietly, in order not
to disturb anyone. After poking about for a few moments he found what
he wanted. There was nothing to open it with, however. Where was the
thing kept? Ah, of course, in the sideboard, he remembered.

The swing-door into the dining-room made no noise; he discovered the
little implement in the drawer with the table-knives and, wrenching off
the metal cap from the bottle, turned to go back the way he had come.
All at once he stopped stock-still and listened. Then he glanced
towards the door that led into the drawing-room. Had he heard
whispered voices?

For thirty seconds he remained rooted to the spot, his ears strained to
catch a repetition of the fancied sound. It had been only a faint
murmur; he might have been mistaken ... yes, there it was again, a sort
of choked, sibilant whisper coming from the adjoining room. Hardly had
he made sure of it when there fell on his ears a small crash, sharp, as
of some object dropped on the parquet. It was followed by a smothered
exclamation in a man's