trong upon her. The pushed open the dining-room door
and walked in.

"Father," she said, "is anything the matter?"

Both men turned, the stranger clearly surprised and annoyed by the
interruption, the Captain for a moment thinking of pulling himself
together and dismissing his daughter with a lie. But he did not do it;
he was too shaken to think quickly, also there was a sense of
reinforcement in her presence; this he did not realise; indeed, he
realised nothing except that she spoke again before he had collected
himself.

"Is it about the money Mr. Rawson-Clew lent you?" she asked.

He nodded, and she turned to the other man, who had risen on her
entrance, and now stood with his back to the evil-smelling stove which
Mary had lighted as usual in honour of Captain Polkington's visitors.
She measured him swiftly, and no detail escaped her; the well-bred
impassive face, where the annoyance caused by her entrance showed only
in the rather hard eyes; the straight figure, even the perfection of
his tailoring and the style of his boots--she summed it all up with
the rapidity of one who has had to depend on her wits before. And her
wits were to be depended on, for, in spite of the warmth of her
protective anger, she felt his superiority of person, position and
ability, and, only too probably, of cause also. She could have laughed
at the contrast he presented to her father and herself and the
surroundings. It was perhaps for this reason that she asked him
maliciously, "Have you come to collect the debt?"

The question went home. "Certainly not," he answered haughtily; "the
money--"

But the Captain prevented whatever he was going to say. "He thinks I
am an adventurer, a sharper," he bleated, now thoroughly throwing
himself on his daughter's protection; "his intention seems to be a
warning not to try to get anything more out of his cousin--something
of that sort."

Julia paid little attention to her father. "You were going to say,"
she inquired serenely of Rawson-Clew, "something about the money, I
think?"

"No," he answered, with cold politeness. "I only meant to suggest
that this is perhaps rather an unpleasant subject for a lady."

He moved as if he would open the door for her, but she stood her
ground. "It is unpleasant," she said; "for that reason had we not
better get it over quickly? You have not come to collect the debt, you
have come, then, for what?"

"To make one or two things plain to Captain Polkington.