knew what he was talking about, and always salted what he knew with happy flashes of wit and humour.Oliver accompanied the two ladies back into the drawing-room, and his mother did not know whether to be glad or sorry that she had not had a few minutes alone with the younger woman. Sometimes it seemed as if she and Laura never were alone together now. Was it possible that of late Laura was deliberately avoiding her? As this half suspicion came into Mrs. Tropenell's mind she looked up and saw her son's eyes fixed on her face.

There was something imperious, imploring, commanding, in the look he bent on her. She saw that he was willing her to go away--to leave him, alone, with Laura....Under the spell of that look she got up. "I must go upstairs for my work," she said quietly. "And I have a letter to write too. I shan't be very long."

It was as if Oliver made but one swift step to the door, and, as he held it open, his mother turned her head away, lest he should see that tears had come into her eyes--tears of pain, and yes, of fear. How was all this to end?

After walking slowly forward into the square brightly lighted hall she suddenly stayed her steps, and clasped her hands together. A terrible temptation--terrible, almost unbelievable to such a woman as was Letitia Tropenell--held her in its grip. She longed with a fearful, gasping longing, to go back and listen at the door which had just closed behind her. So strong was this temptation that she actually visualised herself walking across to a certain corner, turning down the electric light switch, then, in the darkness, creeping to the drawing-room door, and there gently, gently--pushing it open, say half an inch, in order to hear what those two were now saying, the one to the other....

At last, thrusting the temptation from her, she again began walking across the brightly lighted hall, and so, slowly, made her way up the staircase which led to her bedroom. 

What Mrs. Tropenell would have heard, had she yielded to that ignoble temptation, would not have told her anything of what she had so longed to know.

After he had shut the door on his mother, Oliver Tropenell walked back to the place where he had stood a moment ago. But he did not come any nearer than he had been before to his guest, and his manner remained exactly what it had been when they had been three, instead of being, as they were now, two, in that dimly lighted room. Still, both he and Laura, in their secret, hidden selves, were profoundly conscious that 

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