lly Tyson.

"_P.S._--Thanks awfully for the lovely flowers. You can smell them all
over the flat!"

"Come here, you fool," he said gently.

But Mrs. Nevill Tyson was stamping her envelope with great deliberation
and care. She handed it to him at arm's length and darted away. He heard
her turning the key in her bedroom door with a determined click.

He read her letter over again twice. The ridiculous little phrases
convinced him of the groundlessness of his suspicion. Punctuation
would have argued premeditation, and premeditation guilt. "Nevill has
come home--why of course you saw him." She had actually forgotten that
Stanistreet had been there on the evening of his arrival.

He laughed so loud that Mrs. Nevill Tyson heard him in her bedroom.

An hour later he heard her softly unlocking her door. He smiled. She
might be as innocent as she pleased, but she had made him make a cursed
fool of himself, and he meant that she should suffer for that.

He threw Stanistreet's flowers out of the window, put Molly's note up in
its envelope and sent it to the post. Then he sat down to think.

Mrs. Nevill Tyson's room was opposite the one she had just left. She
stood for a moment before her looking-glass, studying her own reflection.
She took off her pearl necklace and spanned her white throat with her
tiny hands. And as she looked she was glad. When all was said and done
she looked beautiful--beautiful after her small fashion. She turned this
way and that to make perfectly sure of the fact. She had realized long
ago how much her hold on Nevill's affections depended on it. His love had
waxed and waned with her beauty. Well--She opened her door before getting
into bed, and for the next hour she lay listening and wondering. She saw
the line of light at the top of the drawing-room door disappear as the
big lamp went out. It was followed by a fainter streak. Nevill must have
lit the little lamp on the table by the window. (Oh, dear! He was going
to sit up, then.) She heard him go into the dining-room beyond and
stumble against things; then came the spurt of a match, followed by the
clinking of glasses. (He was only going to have a smoke and a drink.)
She waited a little while longer, then she called to him. There was no
answer; he must be dozing on the couch in the dining-room. A light wind
lifted the carpet at the door, and she wondered drowsily whether Nevill
had left the drawing-room window open.

He had done all that she sup