ing Lennox' rooms. She saw Margaret
Austen, saw the woman with her, saw the former's candid eyes; saw the
latter's ridiculous airs, saw the construction which between them they
had reached and saw, too, the consequences that had resulted. The dirt
with which she had been besplattered she did not see. The panorama did
not display it. What it alone revealed was Lennox' disaster. Of herself
she did not think and regarding Margaret she did not care. That which
occupied her was Lennox.

But was it true? In Paliser nothing was true, not even his lies. For it
was unaccountable that a matter so simple could not have been cleared
with a word. But it was not unaccountable at all. It was obvious.
Margaret, a born snob, had given Lennox no chance for that word. Some
one, Paliser probably, had invented the admission and she had refused to
see him, after condemning him unheard.

I will attend to that, Cassy decided.

At once the suffocation ceased, the panorama sank, the scene shifted,
the curtain parted, the drama proceeded and she found herself staring at
Paliser, who was staring at her.

"As it is----" he tentatively resumed and would have said more, a lot,
anything to coerce the tears to her eyes and with them surrender.

She gave him no chance. She took the bundle and, before he could
continue, she passed him, opened the door, slammed it with a din that
had in it the clatter of muskets, went down the stair and out to the
perron, before which stood a car.

"The station!" she threw at the mechanician.

The house now, jarred a moment earlier by the crash of porcelain and the
slamming door, had recovered its silence.

From within, Emma, very agreeably intrigued, a footman with a white
sensual face beside her, looked out with slanting eyes.

XXV

Harris, wrinkled as a sweetbread and thin as an umbrella, blinked at
Cassy. "Mr. Lennox is out, mem."

"Then go and fetch him."

Past the servant, Cassy forced her way through the vestibule, into the
sitting-room, where the usual gloom abided, but where, unusually, were a
smell of camphor, two overcoats, two trunks and a bag.

Cassy, putting down the bundle, exclaimed at them. "He is not leaving
town?"

"Yes, mem, to-morrow morning, for Mineola." He spoke grudgingly, looking
as he spoke like a little old mule at bay.

Cassy, noticing that, said: "See here, I don't mean to bully you, but it
is most important that I should see Mr. Lennox--important for him, do
you h