ng with her to-night, now you're
trying to smooth it over."

"My dear Miss Bishop--" He smiled amiably at her distress of
mind--"Surely Jack can go with his sister and some other lady to a
theatre without your being so unreasonably put out about it. You
can't wish to tie him down."

"I don't wish to tie him down. That's the last thing I should dream
of doing. But you know as well as I do that he hates that set in society,
would never have gone near the house in Sloane Street if it had not
been for his sister's unhappiness about her husband!"

Devenish looked up at her quickly with a swift change of expression.

"What unhappiness?" he asked.

"Why, that they're not getting on together."

The moment she had said it, a rush of fear that she had betrayed
Traill's confidence, overwhelmed her with a sense of nausea.

"Please don't say I've said that," she begged.

"Certainly not; but, how on earth can you say it? Captain and Mrs.
Durlacher may not be lovers in the passionate sense of the word, but
I know of few married people who get on as well as they do."

She looked at him with increasing amazement.

"Some time ago--yes--perhaps. But not now?"

"Yes, now. I know it for a fact. They hit it off admirably."

Hit it off--Traill's very words! Then it was a lie. A lie of Mrs.
Durlacher's that day when they were down at Apsley, a lie to win his
sympathy at a moment when she had all but lost it. She had come down
there to Apsley with the intention of estranging them. Traill had
seen through that. Sally had realized at the time that that was what
had stirred him to anger when he had come into the dining-room,
finding his sister there with her. Mrs. Durlacher had failed then.
She remembered her smothered feelings of delight at the attitude he
was taking when she left the room; but it was after that, after she
had gone upstairs, that Mrs. Durlacher, with this lie of her
unhappiness, had won him to her side.

"Are you absolutely sure of that?" she whispered.

"Why, of course! If anybody's spreading that report about, it's a
confounded lie."

Sally looked piteously about her. The iron teeth of the trap she had
seen were surely fast in her now. As yet, she was unable to discern
the deeper motive in Mrs. Durlacher's mind in which the
proprietorship of Apsley Manor played so vital a part; but she was
none the less certain of the designs that were being carried out so
effectually to wrest Traill from her side. She was an