It was about nine o'clock the next morning. The heat of the night before had given place to that incomparable freshness which spring mornings have in Paris.

The windows of Mrs. Admaston's sitting-room were open, and a delightfully scented air, from the lilac blossoms and all the flowers of the gardens in the Tuileries, flooded and floated into the room.

Rooms have an aspect of this or that emotion according to the hour in which the events of the soul have taken place within them.

There are some rooms which always have the same mood. When one goes into them one doesn't impose one's mood, one's fancy, or one's ideas upon the place, but is dominated by one lasting personality—of furniture, of aspect, of general mise en scÈne.

It would be impossible, for example, to have a merry breakfast-party in the hangman's ante-room to the gallows; and one has known rooms in hotels which one enters gladly, unconscious of the pervading gloom which seems to cling to floor and ceiling and rises up like a spectre into the heart and brain after a few minutes' sojourn there.

The sitting-room in the HÔtel des Tuileries, which had been the theatre of such tragic emotions on the last spring midnight, was now ordinary and comfortable enough.

The chairs and settees were all in their proper places. The carpet had been brushed, and its dull blues, greys, and brick-dust reds were all essentially artistic.

And they had brought new flowers there also. The bowls and vases were filled with fresh purple and white lilac. The silver candlesticks had been polished—there were no drippings of wax upon them any more. Tall white candles, fresh, virginal, and unfired, filled all the candlesticks.

In the middle of all this freshness two people were—a man and a woman.

One, Lord Ellerdine, was very tall and lean. He was dressed in a suit of very immaculate grey flannel—not the greyish-green which the ordinary person who wears flannels imagines to be the right thing, but the real grey-grey which costs a good deal of money; if the tailors in Sackville Street and Waterloo Place, from whom we suffer, are to be believed.

Lord Ellerdine's hair—and he hadn't much of it—was what he himself would have described as "the same old dust-colour." He wore a stiff double collar with blue lines upon it, a tie of China silk, and a big black pearl, stuck right down at the bottom, so that it only peeped out from the opening of his waistcoat now and again.

Lord Ellerdine had red eyes—that is to say, that there was a sort of red glint in them. The brows which overhung them were straight and dark, and contradicted with an odd grotesquerie the flickering attempt to really be at home and happy with the world. The face itself was rather tanned and brown, lean in contour and suggesting the explorer and the travelled man; and all this was oddly contradicted by an engaging little button of a mouth, which twitched and lisped and was always rather more jolly than the occasion warranted.

By the side of Lord Ellerdine—or rather standing in the middle of the room and looking down upon him, for he had thrown himself upon the sofa—was a tall, slim, and gracious woman, perfectly dressed in a travelling coat and skirt of tweed. She looked round her rather fretfully.

Her face was radiant—there is no other word for it. Although she had been travelling all night, she appeared to be as fresh as paint—and that exactly describes her.

The complexion was perfect. It had that creamy morbidezza one sees in a furled magnolia bud. Two straight, decisive lips seemed like a "band of scarlet upon a tower of ivory." Lady Attwill's eyes were sapphire-blue and suspicious, but entirely charming. She was, in short, a thoroughly handsome woman, and the sunlight struck curious radiances from the little pearls she wore in the shell-like lobes of her ears.

"Tell madame, will you, Pauline?" she said.

"I'll tell madame that you have arrived," the maid said with a little bow. She crossed the room, knocked, opened the door leading into Mrs. Admaston's bedroom, and disappeared.

Almost immediately Lady Attwill's face changed from its quiet calm and became vivid.

"Cheer up, Dicky!" she said to Lord Ellerdine; "you've been in many a worse fix than this."

The diplomatist looked at her for a moment, his whole silly—but somehow distinguished—face covered with a sort of desperate cheerfulness.

"Worse!" he said. "I should say so. I don't mind gettin' into a 'fix,' as you call it."

"Then what in the world are you grumbling about?" Lady Attwill asked.

"Why, how am I going to get out of it? Any fool can get into a fix—any time. It's gettin' out—what? That's the bally riddle, Alice—gettin' out of it. What?"

Lady Attwill went up to him and dug him confidentially in the shoulder with one pretty gloved thumb.

"Look here, Dicky," she said; "now, did I ever fail you?"

"Oh no, no. You've always been pretty good."

"Now, haven't I got you out of many a scrape?"

Lord Ellerdine seemed to think—that is to say, call upon the resources of a somewhat attenuated memory. "Yes," he replied; "not so confounded many—only two; and—yes—well, of course, that other one was rather awkward."

He chuckled to himself. "But, after all, this is different," he continued. "I am not in this one, exactly. No more are you. It's Peggy's fix. And we don't quite know how she's got into it. I don't like the look of it."

Lady Attwill listened to him with an aspect of particular attention. But if the man had been able to realise it he would have seen the flash of contempt which came and went over her face. He did not, however, and she replied in her ordinary tones:

"Look of it! It's merely a frolic—nothing serious. Collingwood is not the man to run risks. He believes in the simple life."

"Does he, by Jove!" Lord Ellerdine said. "He's not so simple as that, Alice."

"He is not so simple as to get into a complication with Admaston," she answered. "He's no fool—you take my word for it."

Lord Ellerdine grinned his fatuous little grin.

"Seems I have to take your word for everything," he said.

"All right, Dicky," she answered; "just you leave all the thinking to me."

"You don't give me time to think," he answered. "I know I am deuced slow at it. But tell me this. How did Peggy and Collingwood get to my place last autumn before ten o'clock in the morning? Tell me that—what?"

"They motored through the night, of course."

"They jolly well didn't," replied his lordship.

"But Colling told us he did," said Lady Attwill.

"I knew he did. But they didn't."

Lady Attwill had been glancing over the Matin of that day, which had been laid upon the breakfast table. At these words of her companion's she put down the paper rather hurriedly and looked up.

"Dicky," she said, "I believe you know something."

"I know I do."

"What is it, then?"

"Bad breakdown at Selby overnight. They came on to my place in a hired motor next morning. I heard all about it from the man who drove them down from Selby."

Lady Attwill was very genuinely interested, or achieved a fair assumption of interest. "Dicky!" she cried.

Lord Ellerdine nodded his thin head vigorously. "It's a fact," he replied triumphantly. "The fellow is now my second chauffeur. So you see I can find out things if I have time enough. Alice, I don't like this fix Peggy's in. Staying at Selby with Collingwood all night was bad enough, but——"

"Good gracious!" Lady Attwill answered, "can't a woman stay at the same hotel with a man she knows without scandal?"

"Scandal!" Lord Ellerdine replied. "Damn the scandal! It's what folks think. It's who you are. Lots of women wouldn't mind staying at the same hotel I was staying at, and nobody would dream that there was anything wrong—you wouldn't, Alice. But Peggy and Collingwood make people suspect them."

Lady Attwill went up to Lord Ellerdine and pinched his arm playfully. "You silly old Dicky," she said, "you've been listening to a lot of stupid twaddle at your clubs."

"Well," he answered, "they know pretty well what's going on."

"Yes, I suppose they do," she said. "Talk about women and their gossip! Why, Dicky, they're not in it with your smoke-room gang."

At that moment Pauline entered from Mrs. Admaston's bedroom. There was a hardly veiled hostility in her face as she spoke, though her manner was civil enough. "Madame will see Lady Attwill," she said.

Lady Attwill swept across the room, flashing a somewhat curious glance at the old maidservant as she passed her, and entered the bedroom.

Lord Ellerdine had strolled up to the fireplace. "Tell Peggy I am waiting," he called out.

"All right," Lady Attwill said. "You amuse yourself for a few minutes."

Lord Ellerdine began to hum a little tune; then he noticed Pauline, who was arranging some violets upon a side table. "Morning, Pauline," he said. "How's madame?"

"She has a headache," the maid replied; "just a little nervous. Is your lordship well?"

"No, I am not well, Pauline, I am sorry to say. I feel very groggy. I have been all night in a confounded slow train."

Pauline said nothing, but left the room just as the third door opened and Collingwood came briskly into the room.

He was wearing a lounge suit of dark blue. The air of poise and easy carriage which was so marked a part of his personality was very much in evidence now. There was a quiet spring in his step, a brisk and cheery purpose in his movements, and he seemed singularly alert and dÉbonnaire; perfectly dressed, a very proper man to look at, but somehow or other without a suggestion of foppishness, which Lord Ellerdine always managed to convey. His face was calm and composed, but a close observer would have noticed that there were dark rings under the eyes and that the face was slightly paler than its wont.

"Oh, there you are!" Lord Ellerdine said.

"Hello, Ellerdine!" Collingwood replied. "Bright and early as usual?"

"Early, yes," said the other; "but not so deuced bright, old chap."

"When did you get here?"

"About five o'clock."

"Had breakfast?"

"No," said Lord Ellerdine. "I had a bath, a shave, a change, and a brandy-and-soda."

Collingwood went up to the window and sat looking idly down into the Rue de Rivoli.

"Refreshing, but not very filling," he said. "Staying here?"

"No," Lord Ellerdine replied; "they would not let us in. It's race-week, you know. They are packed out. The place is full of big bookies and racing fellows. We had to go to the St. Denis. A nice fix you've got us all in, Collingwood!"

Collingwood turned away from the window.

"Fix? I've got you in? How do you mean?"

Lord Ellerdine struggled to find words in which to express his meaning.

"I'm blowed if I know—quite. Anyway, we're in it."

"I don't understand," Collingwood answered.

"Oh, come on!" replied Lord Ellerdine. "Chuck that business, Colling! I know your beastly way of putting a fellow off, but you can't leave me out of this."

Collingwood lit a cigarette very deliberately. "Leave you out?" he said.

"Wish to heavens you could!" was the rejoinder.

Collingwood perched himself on the end of the sofa, swinging his legs. "Look here, what's up?"

"Are we at St. Moritz?" Lord Ellerdine asked.

"No," Collingwood answered coolly.

"Are we in Switzerland?"

"No."

"Well, where are we?"

"I make a good guess," Collingwood said, "that we are in Paris."

Lord Ellerdine flushed up and began to get angry.

"Well, there you are!" he said. "Damn it, there you are! And you have got the sublime cheek to ask me what's up."

Collingwood smiled. "Now, don't get ratty, Dicky," he said. "It's all right. Only a trifling contretemps. We got on the wrong train—by mistake."

Lord Ellerdine began to stroll up and down the room. He tried to be judicial in his manner. "Now, are you telling me that for a fact or for a joke?" he asked.

"Fact—absolute fact. We were kept until the last moment paying duty on Peggy's cigarettes, and had to rush for the train——"

He had been going to say something further, but Lord Ellerdine interrupted him. "I saw you," he said.

Here Collingwood cut in suddenly: "Yes, getting into the train that was on the move."

"Yes," Lord Ellerdine said, "the Paris express. You jumped Peggy on and sprang after her, dragging her maid with you. A clever bit of work, my friend."

Collingwood shrugged his shoulders. "Well, where were you?" he replied.

"In the other train—the right one. With Alice. It was a rotten thing for you to do."

"What, leave you with Alice?"

Lord Ellerdine shook his head impatiently. "No, no," he said irritably; "to leave us in the lurch like that."

"But I telegraphed to you to Chalons that we had got on the wrong train."

"Yes, you wired to Chalons right enough, but that didn't make it true. I would not have gone if Alice had not persuaded me that the train was running in two parts, and that you would be sure to join us at Chalons."

"Well, it's all right now," Collingwood replied, still preserving the perfect sang-froid with which he had listened to all the other's remarks. "It's all right now, so don't let's say any more about it."

"All right now, by Jove!" Ellerdine replied. "Is it? Suppose Admaston hears about it—what?"

"Of course," Collingwood said, "if you think it is absolutely necessary, we'll invent some yarn that will satisfy him."

"I do think it necessary. But you'll have to do it. I never could invent—never. No good at it. Confound you, Colling, leaving us...."

Collingwood's manner changed from coolness to something more intimate. "Now, look here, Dicky," he said persuasively. "I didn't think you'd cut up rough about it. I thought Alice possibly might, but not you."

"Oh, she doesn't mind," Ellerdine answered. "She never believes that people get on the wrong train, or have motor accidents so that they can have a night off."

Collingwood put his feet down to the floor and threw the end of his cigarette into the fireplace. "Now, look here," he said; "do you mean that you think that I——" He hesitated for a moment.

"No, I don't," Lord Ellerdine answered; "but what will Admaston think? He is sure to hear of it. I'll bet you a fiver it's known in London to-night. There is always someone on the spot to notice things that go wrong, and this is so suspicious—so damned suspicious, mind you. Why, I don't like the look of it—mind, the look of it—myself."

"Then we must set your conscience at rest, that's all," Collingwood replied.

"How?"

"Well, we must all have a proper, coherent, connected yarn to tell. That's quite simple."

Ellerdine shook his head thoughtfully. "I don't think it will work," he said. "You can't get four people to tell the same yarn without variation. There's sure to be one let it down just where it ought to be kept up."

"If it were a long, complicated yarn, perhaps," said Collingwood; "but I don't mean that at all. Just a plain, unvarnished tale."

"Unvarnished!" the peer replied. "Well, it'll take a deuce of a lot of paint to make this one look all right."

"Not a bit of it," Collingwood replied. "Easy as anything."

Lord Ellerdine went to the fireplace once more and stood with his back to the flames. "Right ho," he said; "go ahead."

"Here you are, then," Collingwood began. "We all got on the wrong train."

"But we didn't."

"Damn it!" Collingwood said, "of course we didn't; but we'll say we did."

Lord Ellerdine began to check the points upon the fingers of one hand, as if anxious to commit them to memory even at this early stage. "Am I to say we did?" he asked.

"We will all say we did," Collingwood replied.

"I shall never be able to," Lord Ellerdine remarked hopelessly.

"Confound it, Dicky! Are you the George Washington of the lot?"

The peer shook his head more vigorously. That imputation, at anyrate, he was anxious to avoid. "No, no," he said quickly; "it's not the truth that bothers me. It's getting the blooming fib to sound all right."

Collingwood repeated his instruction as if he were teaching a lesson to a child, speaking slowly and impressively. "'We all got on the wrong train.' There's nothing difficult about saying that."

Lord Ellerdine repeated the sentence in exactly the same voice.

"'We all got on the wrong train.'"

"Bravo, Dicky!" said Collingwood. "Now then, don't relax your attention, old chap. The next is that we all stayed the night at this hotel."

The index finger of Lord Ellerdine's right hand moved from the thumb to the first finger of his left. He appeared to have got it all right, when suddenly a doubt seemed to enter the vacant spaces of his mind.

"What, here?" he asked.

"Yes, here; at this hotel."

"Oh! Come, old chap! Doesn't that look like a bally lie? Now think it over for yourself. Listen. 'We all stayed the night at this hotel.'"

Collingwood was a patient man, and he listened without any betrayal of what he really felt in dealing with this pleasant fool.

"Well," he said, "what's wrong with it?"

"Oh! it lacks something," was the reply; and though the speaker did not amplify his statement, his voice was full of doubt and hesitation.

"Oh, rot!" Collingwood answered. "It's only wrong because we didn't stay here. If you can say, 'We all got on the wrong train,' surely to goodness you can say that we all stayed the night at this hotel?"

"Yes," Ellerdine answered slowly. "I suppose it ought to be easy enough."

"No wonder you chucked diplomacy," Collingwood said.

"Oh! I didn't mind a fib or two for international reasons."

"I see," Collingwood rejoined. "Your conscience begins to prick you only when fibs are told for domestic purposes."

"Well, you see, you run much greater risks of being found out. It's awful to be found out in an ordinary lie—people make such a fuss of other people's lies."

"Do you mean to tell me that national lies are never found out?"

"Well, you see," Ellerdine replied—the discussion was getting a little bit beyond him, and again he struggled to find words,—"you see, national lies are not about persons." Then he shook his head. "I'm damned bad at it, Collingwood," he said in a final sort of voice. "I can't rely on my memory. I suppose there's no other way out of it?"

"My dear chap, none whatever," Collingwood said.

"'We all got on the wrong train,'" Ellerdine repeated to himself slowly in a sing-song voice; and then, looking up brightly, "Does seem easy, doesn't it?"

"Top hole," said Collingwood.

Thus encouraged, Lord Ellerdine began to repeat the second half of his lesson. "'We all stayed the night at this hotel.' There's something wrong with that."

"It's only your sense of the scrupulous," Collingwood replied. "Only say it often enough. Say it thirty or forty times; then it will sound all right."

At this moment the door opened and Lady Attwill came in. She looked quickly at Collingwood and he at her.

"Good morning," he said. "Well, how is Peggy?"

"She has a bad headache," Lady Attwill replied. "She's coming in in a minute or two. I have had a warm quarter of an hour, I can tell you, though I am sure I don't know what I have done...."

If the woman was acting she was acting supremely, for there seemed genuine disgust in her voice.

"Is she much cut up?" Lord Ellerdine asked.

"I should think she is! She's dreadfully cut up! I don't know what we are to do," Lady Attwill said.

Lord Ellerdine suddenly became important; his little mouth smiled brightly. He was the bearer of good news. "Oh, that's all settled," he said, rubbing his hands briskly together. "I and Collingwood have arranged it all."

"Arranged what?" Lady Attwill asked.

"Well, do you see, we all——"

The bright expression faded from the ex-diplomatist's face. "Tell her, Collingwood," he said. "My head won't work. I've forgotten everything already."

"You've never given Dicky anything to think about?" Lady Attwill said in mock alarm.

"Not much," Collingwood answered.

Ellerdine flushed up angrily. "Not much!" he cried. "He gets on the wrong train. He leaves us standing at the post like a couple of sublime martyrs. Goes off to Paris and leaves us kicking our confounded heels at Chalons. We come here after them—find the hotel full of bookies—travel all night in a beastly slow train—no sleep, no food, no Switzerland. Not much to think about! I shall have an attack of brain fever after this affair."

Lady Attwill went up to the enraged gentleman. "Poor Dicky!" she said soothingly. "He's had a bad night. Dicky is no good unless he gets his proper sleep. Now sit down, there's a good boy, and let's talk it over properly."

She led him to a chair with a radiant smile, and then turned to Collingwood. "Now tell me, what is it that you have arranged?" As she said this she felt in the side pocket of his coat and drew out his cigarette case. Opening it, she gave him one and took one for herself, struck a match and lit it.

"Well," Collingwood answered, leaning over the back of the sofa on which his friend had seated herself. "A short, straight tale—simple, to the point, and easy to tell."

"The truth?" Lady Attwill asked.

"The truth! Never! Who's going to tell Admaston the truth?" Lord Ellerdine burst out.

"How's he to know?" Lady Attwill said.

"Know!" Ellerdine retorted. "I'll bet Collingwood a fiver all London knows to-night."

He looked anxiously at the other man, unable to understand how he could take things so easily, absolutely unconscious of anything underlying this unfortunate occurrence, absolutely unsuspicious of the sinister forces at work around him.

"Oh, bosh!" Collingwood answered. "Anyway, we can say we all got on the wrong train."

"'That we all got on the wrong train,'" came with parrot-like precision from the diplomatist.

"But we didn't," Lady Attwill said, looking from one to the other.

Lord Ellerdine jumped up from his chair, his face radiant with triumph. "There you are!" he said to Collingwood. "Just what I told you!"

Lady Attwill became alive to the situation. "Oh, I see," she said; "that is the short, straight, simple tale. I see. 'We all got on the wrong train.'"

"You see, Dicky!" Collingwood said with a smile. "See how quickly Alice picks it up."

"Oh, she's used to it," said Ellerdine. "She picks up things very quickly. But tell her the sequel—that's the water-jump for me."

"Come on; let's have a look at it," said Lady Attwill.

Collingwood seemed vastly amused. He assumed the air of a comedian. His hands fluttered before him in pantomime. His handsome face became droll and merry.

"'We all stayed the night at this hotel,'" he said.

Lord Ellerdine nodded with an anxious look in his eyes towards Lady Attwill. "Now try that," he said.

"'We all stayed the night at this hotel,'" said Lady Attwill with perfect naturalness and ease.

"There you are!" said Collingwood.

The middle-aged fool in the arm-chair was quite interested and pleased. He saw nothing of the grimness which underlay this gay, light-hearted chatter, in this gay and brilliant room. The other two, man and woman, were playing their parts most skilfully—not so much to deceive Ellerdine, but to trick themselves into the belief that they were not engaged in a very dirty, ugly business.

It's an extraordinary thing, but nevertheless perfectly true, that people who are able to infuse a sinister and tragic moment with mocking gaiety certainly provide for themselves an anodyne to the pain and fear it would otherwise bring them.

No doubt that is why the devil is generally represented as smirking or leering.

The door opened and the Scotch-French waiter with a large tray entered, followed by another also carrying a tray, but whose swarthy features and thick purple lips proclaimed him no hybrid, but a true son of the CÔte d'Azur.

Lord Ellerdine jumped up. "Food!" he said. "I am starving."

Lady Attwill rose also. "Poor Dicky must always have his food," she said. "I always think he never seems quite human till he has had his breakfast. When we were down at his place together——"

Collingwood nudged her with a warning look. "Piano!" he said.

"What about?" she whispered, with a rather sardonic grin. "I don't want to play."

"The waiter, I mean," Collingwood replied.

"Bien!" she answered, seating herself in front of the cafetiÈre and pouring out the hot brown coffee.

Lord Ellerdine had also sat down. He looked at his as yet empty plate and drummed with his fingers upon the table-cloth. "'We all stayed the night at this hotel,'" he said in a perfectly audible voice.

"Oui, monsieur," said Jacques of Ecclefechan suddenly.

Ellerdine started and looked up, his face expressing great surprise. "Get away," he said. "I wasn't speaking to you."

Collingwood frowned. His nerves, now, didn't seem quite under the same control as they had been before. "Laissez les autres choses, garÇon. Nous nous servirons."

"Bien, monsieur," said the waiter, with an ugly and furtive smile upon his face, which nobody noticed, as he left the room.

"Come on, Alice. Where's my coffee?" said Lord Ellerdine.

"There you are," she answered. "Coffee, Colling?"

Collingwood nodded. "What is there?" he asked.

Lady Attwill lifted the covers. "Omelette, bacon, sole, mushrooms."

"Sole for me."

"Bacon and mushrooms, Alice," Ellerdine remarked, quite himself again at the thought of breakfast.

"You have no idea how I buck up after a cup of coffee," he continued; "but, upon my soul, I feel like a fried flounder this morning. I don't think I shall ever be in a hotter place than that confounded train from Chalons."

"Yes, you will, Dicky," Lady Attwill remarked, taking a piece of toast from the rack.

"Oh yes, you will, Dicky," Collingwood echoed; "don't make any mistake about that."

"After all," Lady Attwill went on, "it wasn't so bad. You worried; that was what made you hot."

"You don't know anything about it. You slept like a log all the way," Ellerdine said.

"Easy conscience," answered the lady, beginning her breakfast with great satisfaction.

"You didn't get on the wrong train," said Ellerdine meaningly.

Collingwood put down his fish-fork. The long strain to which his nerves had been subjected, the irritation which he had so well suppressed until now, had its way with him and burst out.

"Oh, damn it!" he said, "you two make me tired. Do shut up about the wrong train. Let's have our breakfast in peace."

Lord Ellerdine busied himself with his mushrooms. "I wish I had a hide as thick as yours, Colling, old man," he said. "You do take things smoothly. Look at him, Alice—eating away as if he was on his honeymoon!"

Collingwood glared at his vis-À-vis. "Honeymoon!" he said.

"He doesn't care a fig about getting us into this mess. What excellent bacon they have here!" Lord Ellerdine went on.

Again Collingwood got the better of his rising temper. "Oh, you'll be all right, Dicky," he said, "when we get to St. Moritz to-morrow."

"We're not going," Lady Attwill said shortly.

Collingwood started. "We are," he said.

"Wrong, my boy," said Lady Attwill again. "Peggy is going back."

"Back! Back where?"

"To London."

"She doesn't mean it?" Collingwood said, putting down his fork and looking straight at Lady Attwill.

She nodded at him, and he knew that what she said was true.

"There you are!" piped out in Lord Ellerdine's voice. "I knew it; I felt it in my bones all the time I was in that beastly train. Peggy's got the hump. You have spoilt the whole show, Colling. I can't eat any more."

He pushed his chair away from the table with a perplexed and angry face, and began to walk up and down the room.

"Hang it!" Collingwood said, "is this the first time that anyone got on the wrong train?"

"No, it is not," Ellerdine answered shortly. "But it is the first time it has happened to Peggy. Anybody but Peggy."

"It seems to me," Collingwood said, "that we are making a lot of unnecessary fuss."

"Yes; let's drop it," came from Lady Attwill.

"Alice," Lord Ellerdine persisted, "don't you agree with me?"

She sighed, but it was necessary to preserve appearances. "Well, Dicky," she said, "Peggy has not shown a tenacious desire to observe the strict letter of every propriety. I know that there has been nothing wrong. Absolutely nothing but little frisks and frolics now and then—quite all right actually—looking perhaps worse than they were—nothing else. But, after all, it is not what you do; the trouble of it is what other folks say you do."

The persistent moralist was not to be put off. "The married woman," he said, in a voice as near to a pulpit manner as he could get, "cannot afford to have anyone say a word. Look at Alice. Before Attwill kicked the bucket she lived in a glass case. Didn't you, Alice?"

Collingwood chuckled: not merrily at all, but with a rather nasty cynicism—a snigger, in fact.

"Look here, Dicky," he said, "if you don't stop your sickening habit of preaching left-handed morality at me I'll give you up. I can't stand it. I am not moral—don't know the first thing about it—never met anybody who did. Man is not moral; environment makes it impossible. You're not moral, Dicky, although you may think you are. And as for society, it is absolutely unmoral."

"I say! I say! I say! Listen to our future Home Secretary!" said Lord Ellerdine.

"No fear," Collingwood answered. "I leave that field to Admaston and the other cackling crew of humbugs."

Lady Attwill laughed amusedly, and Ellerdine was about to say something else, when the door opened and Peggy entered.

She was very simply but very expensively dressed in an exquisite walking-dress of a colour which was neither grey nor amethyst, but a cunning blend of both. At her breast she wore a little sprig of white lilac. There was a sudden silence as she entered, a silence almost as if the three people were conspirators.

Peggy walked briskly up to the table, nodding and smiling. "Well, you're a nice lot," she said. "Why didn't you tell me breakfast was ready? I have been dying for a cup of coffee. Anything good in the food line? Something smells good. What is it? Mushrooms—just the very thing! I like mushrooms. Remind one of early risings and misty mornings. How are you, Dicky? Alice, give me some coffee, there's a dear. Hello, Colling! any news?"

Her chatter was more general than addressed to any particular person, and she didn't seem to require any answer to her questions. At anyrate, nobody made any answer, and there was an uncomfortable silence as Peggy began her breakfast.

"You're a jolly lot," she said after a minute or so. "What's up with you all? These mushrooms are nice. Dicky, pass the toast. What? I thought you said something, Alice."

Lady Attwill shook her head. "No," she answered in a rather strained voice.

There was another silence. Suddenly Peggy put down her knife and fork with a little clatter and rose from her chair. "This room is horribly stuffy," she said, going to the window. "There, that's better. Oh! what a lovely morning! Dear old Paris! how I do love it!"

She seemed restless and unable to remain long in one position, and soon she had fluttered back to the breakfast-table.

"Alice," she said, "please pour me out another cup of coffee.—Well, Dicky, I put my foot into it nicely last night, didn't I?"

"Yes, you jolly well did," Lord Ellerdine answered shortly.

"I knew what you wanted to talk about, Dicky," she said.

Collingwood interposed. "Peggy, don't go on like that. I have explained it to Dicky."

"Were you quite the one to explain?" she asked.

"Well," Collingwood replied, "it was my fault I rushed you into the train."

Lord Ellerdine started. Something already beginning to be familiar had penetrated his consciousness. "We all got on the wrong train," he said.

"Oh! All?" Peggy asked.

"Yes," said the diplomatist—"yes—no—that's what we're going to say."

"To whom?" asked Peggy.

"Well—well—to—well, to anyone who wants to know."

"Who should want to know?" Peggy asked.

"Oh, no one, Peggy," said Lady Attwill; "but it's best to be prepared, you know."

"But I don't know. Why should I know? Be prepared for what?"

"Nothing, dear, absolutely nothing. Only, some chatty fool might ask."

"Ask what?"

"Well—awkward questions."

"About getting on the wrong train?"

"Yes—and——"

Peggy pressed home her questions. She would not understand. "What else?" she said.

"We all stayed the night at this hotel," Lord Ellerdine remarked.

"Did we?" Peggy asked.

"Yes," he said—"no! Oh! But it is best to be prepared."

"I see," Peggy said at last. "What a dull creature I am! Dear me! how stupid I didn't see it before! You have all made it up to put me right. You and Alice didn't go to Switzerland—you came on to Paris. You and Alice didn't get to Chalons and come on here by the slow train—you stayed here all night. I see. Now, that's so kind and thoughtful of you all! But for whom is this delightful story?"

"Dicky's scruples," Collingwood said hurriedly.

"I see. Dicky wanted it, did he?" Peggy replied. "Well, Dicky, I hope your moral sensibilities are quite satisfied. We all got on the wrong train and we all stayed the night at this hotel."

"Quite so," Ellerdine said quickly; "just a short, straight, simple tale, ready for any emergency."

"And what emergency do you expect?"

"Dearest Peggy, none at all," Lady Attwill said, with a note of anxious affection in her voice.

"I see. I understand. But don't you think the tale will need a lot of corroboration?"

"But only if someone questions it."

"Oh!" Peggy said, and there was a world of meaning in the exclamation.

"You see," Lord Ellerdine went on anxiously—"you see, it's all right, Peggy. We have left nothing to chance."

Lady Attwill nodded. "Nothing at all," she said, echoing her friend.

Peggy looked at them each in turn. Her sweet and youthful face bore little trace of what she had gone through the night before; and though her head was throbbing and her nerves were all jangling and raw, her freshness and purity of countenance remained absolutely unimpaired. Beside her Alice Attwill suddenly seemed to have grown old.

She looked at them each in turn with grave contemplation—lastly at Collingwood. "And what do you think about it, Colling?" she asked at length. "Don't you think that we are a precious set of fools? No—that's unkind of me. Not you, Alice. Not you, Dicky. I am the precious fool. Fool! Why, I should have been in cap and bells! A thing to make the whole world laugh. For only the fool will ask for an explanation—the wise, if they ask, will look on the explanation as the better part of the joke. But tell me, Dicky, why is the explanation necessary?"

"Oh! Come, Peggy, come. Confound it!" Lord Ellerdine blundered out. "It looks so deuced bad."

Peggy made a grimace at him. "Candid!" she said. "Now that was frank. 'It looks so deuced bad.' That's it. Looks! But only looks. What do you think, Colling? Can't we tell the truth? Is there anything to hide?"

"Nothing," Collingwood said.

"There," Peggy went on; "there's nothing to hide."

"Oh, we all know that," Lord Ellerdine said hastily.

Peggy's rising temper almost got the better of her. "Then why the explanation—the 'short, straight, simple tale'? Why not the truth?"

She clenched her hands, and an angry light burned in her eyes. "Oh! I'll leave you for a moment. I must go out. This place is stifling! We ought all to be out in the air. We'll grow mouldy in here—plotting. Alice, I'll put on my hat. Colling, you must invent another tale to satisfy Dicky's scruples. Think it over."

She tore out of the room into her own and shut the door with a rather vicious slam.

"Well, I'm jiggered!" Lord Ellerdine said.

Lady Attwill nodded with a slight tightening of the lips. "I told you she was upset," she answered.

Collingwood rose from the table and went towards his own room.

"Well, Dicky," he said, "I have done the best I can to satisfy you. I'll get my hat and take Peggy for a walk and talk it over." And he also left the room.

"Well," Ellerdine remarked, "this comes of thinking of your friends." He went to the fireplace and gazed rather gloomily at the glowing logs. "May the devil take me if I ever care a damn again what folks think of 'em," he went on.

Alice Attwill went up to the window. "Dicky, it is very strange," she said. "I have never seen Peggy in that nasty mood before."

"I've a jolly good mind to think the worst has happened," the man remarked.

She shrugged her shoulders. "Well, anyway, Colling is not in Peggy's good books," she said, and, pulling one of the large windows open, she stepped out upon the balcony.

Lord Ellerdine was left alone. His face was grave and perplexed; but seeing the Matin lying on the sofa, where Lady Attwill had dropped it before breakfast, he went up, sat down, and was soon immersed in the news of the day.

There came a light tap upon the door leading into the corridor, which was flung open immediately afterwards. Jacques stood there holding the door open.

"Mr. Admaston," he said in a loud, clear voice.