think you're horrid!" Doria exclaimed, "and if you weren't the wife
of Adrian's trusted friend, I would never speak to you again."

"Rubbish!" said Barbara. "I'm talking to you for your good, and you know
it."

Meanwhile Jaffery lingered on in London, in the cheerless little eyrie
in Victoria Street, with no apparent intention of ever leaving it.
Arbuthnot of _The Daily Gazette_ satirically enquiring whether he wanted
a job or still yearned for a season in Mayfair he consigned, in his
grinning way, to perdition. Change was the essence of holiday-making,
and this was his holiday. It was many years since he had one. When he
wanted a job he would go round to the office.

"All right," said Arbuthnot, "and, in the meantime, if you want to keep
your hand in by doing a fire or a fashionable wedding, ring us up."

Whereat Jaffery roared, this being the sort of joke he liked.

The need of a holiday amid the bricks and mortar of Victoria Street may
have impressed Arbuthnot, but it did not impress me. I dismissed the
excuse as fantastic. I tackled him one day, at lunch, at the club,
assuming my most sceptical manner.

"Well," said he, "there's Doria. Somebody must look after her."

"Doria," said I, "is a young woman, now that she is in sound health,
perfectly capable of looking after herself. And if she does want a man's
advice, she can always turn to me."

"And there's Liosha."

"Liosha," I remarked judiciously, "is also a young woman capable of
looking after herself. If she isn't, she has given you very definitely
to understand that she's going to try. Have you had any more interesting
evenings out lately?"

"No," he growled. "She's offended with me because I warned her off that
low-down bounder."

"I think you did your best," said I, "to make her take up with him."

He protested. We argued the point, and I think I got the best of the
argument.

"Well, anyhow," he said with an air of infantile satisfaction, "she
can't marry him."

"Who's going to prevent her, if she wants to?"

"The law of England." He laughed, mightily pleased. "The beggar is
married already. I've found that out. He's got three or four wives in
fact--oh, a dreadful hound--but only one real one with a wedding ring,
and she lives up in the north with a pack of children."

"All the more dangerous for Liosha to associate with such a villain."

He waved the suggestion aside. No fear of that, said he. It was not
Liosha's game. Hers was an Amazon