em!" He peered at her. "What are you talking about now?"

Ah, she had said too much! She bit her lip. They had reached the corner,
and the gliding cable car was approaching. She turned to him with a last
appeal.

"Don't ask me anything! Don't come with me! Don't follow me!"

Not until she was safely inside the car did she dare look back at him.
He was still on the corner, and he raised his hat and smiled so
reassuringly that she was half-way home before she realized that, in
spite of all she had urged upon him, he had not committed himself to any
promise. And yet, she thought in dismay, he had almost made her give
away Harry's confidence. She was seeing more and more clearly that this
was the danger of meeting him. He always got something out of her and
never, by chance, gave her anything in return. If he should seek her
to-night she dared not be at home! Any place would be safer than her own
house. It would be better to fulfil her engagement and go to the
reception with Clara and Harry. That was a house Kerr did not know.

It was awkward to have to announce this sudden change of plan after her
pretenses of the morning, but of late she had lived too constantly with
danger for Clara's lifted eyebrows to daunt her. The mere trivial act of
being dressed each day was fraught with danger. To get the sapphire off
her person before Marrika should appear; to put it back somehow after
Marrika had done; to shift it from one place to another as she wore
gowns cut high or low--and every moment in fear lest she be discovered
in the act! This was her daily manoeuver. To-night she clasped the
chain around her waist beneath her petticoats. But Marrika's sensitive
fingers, smoothing over, for the last time, the close-fitting front of
the gown, felt the sapphire, fumbled with it, and tried to adjust it
like a button.

"That is all right," Flora said quickly. "Nothing shows." Was it always
to make itself known, she thought uneasily, no matter how it was hid?

She was ready early, in the hope that Harry might come, as he had been
wont to do, a little before the appointed hour. But he turned up without
a moment to spare. Clara was down-stairs in her cloak when he appeared.
There was no chance for a word at dinner. But if she could not manage it
later in the wider field of the reception, why, then she deserved to
fail in everything.

But she found, upon their arrival that even this was going to be hard to
bring about. For she was imme