the queer little bell of No. 10 Downing Street. As he waited on the door-step, however, he was a little disconcerted to observe that the blinds were drawn down, and immediately the door was opened he instinctively knew that the house was, for his purpose at least, empty. None the less, he asked for Lady Kathleen, only[Pg 80] to be met with the grave reply that her ladyship had left that morning by motor car for Trant Hall, in Hertfordshire. [Pg 80] Without any display of discomposure Westerham nodded the man his thanks for the information and retraced his steps to the hotel. The departure of Lady Kathleen to some slight extent unsettled his mind. He reflected that perhaps he had been a little too hasty in his decision to tell her everything. There was the possibility that she would disbelieve him, and the possibility, moreover, that she would tell her father; and if she told her father there was the further possibility that the Premier would be adamant in his refusal to disclose his troubles. And in that case he would be absolutely baulked. Westerham was a keen judge of character, and he saw that if her father refused to speak Lady Kathleen would refuse to speak too. Then indeed he would be in a quandary, for he would be entirely cut off from those whom he wished to befriend, even if he did not excite their active hostility. Upon these reflections he instantly decided to alter his mind, comforting himself on this score with the dictum that it is only the dead who never change. But though he decided to withhold his identity, he was resolved to make one last effort to induce Lady Kathleen to confide in him. With this idea he turned back, not to his hotel, but to his rooms in Bruton Street, from which he had been absent for so long without explanation. There he was met on the threshold by the entirely[Pg 81] immaculate and discreet servant with whom the youthful, but worldly-wise, Lord Dunton had provided him. [Pg 81] The man's eyes revealed nothing. He merely bowed and waited, with that urbane silence which characterises the best kind of English servant. The man's face, indeed, expressed no surprise even at the rather shabby clothes which
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