e had driven him away, and now she needed him.

The girl was watching her out of the corner of her small black eyes. She
saw Joan tear up the letter she had commenced to write.

"It was to him, she didn't know he had gone," Alice Betts thought, and
Alice Betts was right.

* * * * *

Mr. Philip Slotman had fallen on evil days, yet Mr. Philip Slotman's
wardrobe of excellent and tasteful clothes was so large and varied that
poverty was not likely to affect his appearance for a long time to come.

Presumably also his stock of cigars was large, for leaning against the
gate beside the tumble-down barn he was drowning the clean smell of the
earth and the night with the more insinuating and somewhat sickly smell
of a fine Havannah.

Some way down the road, perhaps a quarter of a mile distant, stood a
large shabby car drawn up against a hedge, and in that car dozed a
chauffeur.

Mr. Slotman took out his watch and looked at it in the dim light.

It was past nine, and he muttered an oath under his breath.

"She won't be such a fool as not to come now that fellow's gone!" he
thought, and he was right, for a few moments later she was there.

"So you did come?"

"I am here," Joan said quietly. "You wish to speak to me?"

"Don't be so confoundedly hold-off! Aren't you going to shake hands?"

"Certainly not!"

"Oh, very well!" he snarled. "Don't then. Still putting on your airs, my
lady!"

"I am here to hear anything you wish to say to me. Any threats that you
have to make, any bargain that you wish to propose. I thought when I
paid you that money--"

"That money's gone; it went in a few hours."

He felt savagely angry at her calmness, at her pride and superiority.
Why, knowing what he knew, she ought to be pretty well on her knees to
him.

"Please tell me what you wish to see me about and let me go. It is
money, of course?"

Her voice was level, filled with scorn and utter contempt, and it made
the man writhe in helpless fury.

"Look here, stow that!" he said coarsely. "Don't ride the high horse
with me. Remember I know you, know all about you. I know who you are and
what you are, and--and don't--don't"--he was stuttering and stammering in
his rage--"don't think you can put me in my place, because you can't!"

Joan did not answer.

"If I want money I've got a right to ask for it! And I do. I've got
something to sell, ain't I?--knowledge and silence. And silence is worth
a lot