ant you at any moment."

The smart young fellow touched his cap, and the butler flinging open the
door put an end to further possible instructions. Nugent, who was aware
that the great manufacturer had gone to London that morning to attend a
board meeting, blandly inquired if Mr. Maynard was in. On receiving the
expected reply that the master would not be back till next day, he
affected to consider deeply, caressing his long moustache.

"That is annoying," he said at last. "I wished to see him very
particularly. Are the ladies at home?"

"Miss Dymmock is in the drawing-room, sir; but Miss Maynard is either in
the park or in the gardens--probably in the rosery, which is her
favourite place," said the butler.

"Ah!" murmured Nugent, and again he seemed to be plunged into perplexity
by Mr. Maynard's absence. "I had better see Miss Dymmock, perhaps. No,
on second thoughts I won't trouble her. I will leave a message with Miss
Maynard, if you will be good enough to show me where I shall be likely
to find her."

So did this past-master in the art of chicane take elaborate pains to
have it understood at the Manor that Violet was the last person whom he
had originally set out to see. The butler called a footman to pilot the
visitor to the embowered pleasaunce where four days earlier Leslie
Chermside's declaration of love had been wrung from his headstrong
tongue. With an unread book at her side, Violet was sitting on the same
seat where her brief wooing had begun and ended. Nugent's eyes gleamed
with momentary satisfaction as he noted the sadness in the beautiful
face, the listless droop in the attitude of the graceful figure. But by
the time he reached her and bent over the proffered hand his manner was
that of the courtly gentleman, tinged with a trace of grave concern
which yielded to a semblance of uncontrolled agitation as soon as the
footman had retired. His pose and facial expression was that of the
bearer of ill tidings to the life. Violet, strung to a pitch of nervous
tension by her lover's strange demeanour in the orangery the preceding
night, read in Nugent's countenance the exact emotion he intended to
show.

"This is not a duty call, Mr. Nugent?" she said, as she motioned him to
a seat at her side. Nugent preferred to stand, looking down at her. He
wanted to mark the effect of every word he had to say.

"No," he replied, deftly throwing off his "society" manner, and, with
the consummate skill of the genuine