e world. They
suffer, of course, but they make others suffer as well. If I were like
_you_--ah, if I were like _you_!' Harvey laughed.

CHAPTER 8

To Alma, on his return, he gave a full account of all he had heard and
done. The story of Hugh Carnaby's good fortune interested her greatly.
She elicited every detail of which Harvey had been informed; asked
shrewd questions; and yet had the air of listening only for her
amusement.

'Should you have thought Redgrave likely to do such a thing?' Rolfe
inquired.

'Oh, I don't know him at all well. He has been a friend of Sibyl's for
a long time--so, of course----'

Her voice dropped, but in a moment she was questioning again.

'You say that Mr. Redgrave went to see him at Coventry?'

'Yes. Redgrave must have heard he was there, from Sibyl, I suppose.'

'And that was two days ago?'

'So Carnaby said--Why?'

'Somebody--oh, I think it was Mrs. Rayner Mann, yesterday--said Mr
Redgrave was in Paris.'

Cecil Morphew's affairs had much less interest for her; but when Harvey
said that he was going to town again tomorrow, to look at the shop in
Westminster Bridge Road, she regarded him with an odd smile.

'You surely won't get mixed up in things of that kind?'

'It might be profitable,' he answered very quietly; 'and--one doesn't
care to lose any chance of that kind--just now----'

He would not meet her eyes; but Alma searched his face for the meaning
of these words, so evidently weighted.

'Are you at all uneasy, Harvey?'

'Not a bit--not a bit,' answered the weak man in him. 'I only meant
that, if we are going to remove----'

They sat for more than five minutes in silence. Alma's brain was
working very rapidly, as her features showed. When he entered, she
looked rather sleepy; now she was thrilling with vivid consciousness;
one would have thought her absorbed in the solution of some exciting
problem. Her next words came unexpectedly.

'Harvey, if you mean what you say about letting me follow my own
instincts, I think I shall decide to try my fortune--to give a public
recital.'

He glanced at her, but did not answer.

'We made a sort of bargain--didn't we?' she went on, quickly,
nervously, with an endeavour to strike the playful note. 'Hughie shall
go to Mrs. Abbott's, and I will attend to what you said about the
choice of acquaintances.'

'But surely neither of those things can be a subject of bargaining
between us? Isn't your interest in both at l