AS so often happens after hours or days of crises, and even of quarrel, things went better for a while after Laura's return to The Chase.

True, life was now, even more than before, dull, sad, and difficult. She missed Oliver Tropenell's constant companionship and stimulating talk, more than she was willing to acknowledge even to her innermost self. And yet, when Godfrey spoke of the other man's absence from Freshley with regret, his words jarred on her, and made her feel vaguely ashamed. Yet surely, surely she had nothing to reproach herself with in the matter of Oliver Tropenell? She would so gladly have kept him as Godfrey's friend as well as her own.

They had made it up, those two ill-matched people—made it up, that is, after a fashion. They were now much where they had been six months ago, just before Oliver Tropenell with his strong, masterful personality had come into their joint lives.

And Godfrey? Godfrey Pavely was happier, more complacent than usual, during those late autumn days. He also was ashamed—though not unreasonably so—of the absurd importance he had attached to those two vulgar anonymous letters! He was sorry now that he had spoken of the matter to Oliver Tropenell, for that odd, rather awkward talk of theirs on the matter had been perhaps a contributory cause of the other man's sudden departure. If Oliver came home for Christmas, he, Godfrey, would "make it all right."

The banker had yet another reason for feeling life pleasanter than usual just now. He was engaged in a rather big bit of financial business of a kind his soul loved, for it was secret, immediately profitable, and with a gambling risk attached to it. The only person to whom he had said a word concerning the affair was Katty Winslow, and even to her, for he was a very prudent man, he had been quite vague.

With Katty he was becoming daily more intimate. Laura's cold aloofness made him seek, instinctively, a kinder, warmer, and yes, occasionally, a tenderer feminine presence. For the first time, lately, Godfrey had begun to tell himself that Katty would have made an almost perfect wife.... And Katty could have told you almost the exact moment when that thought had first flashed upon Godfrey Pavely's brain. But she also knew that so far he was content, most irritatingly content, with the status quo. Not so she——And one evening Katty tried an experiment which was on the whole remarkably successful, though its effects were strangely different from what she had expected.

While dining alone with Godfrey and Laura at The Chase, she startled her host and hostess by throwing out a careless word as to the possibility of her leaving Rosedean—of letting the house furnished, for a year....

Laura was astonished to see how much this casual remark of Katty's upset Godfrey. He uttered an exclamation of deep surprise and annoyance, and his wife told herself bitterly how strange it was that Godfrey, feeling so strongly about Katty, should not understand how she, Laura, felt about Gillie. After all, Gillie was her own brother, and Katty was not Godfrey's sister—only an old playmate and friend!

Godfrey was, in very truth, much more than upset at those few careless words of his old friend—playmate, in the sense that Laura meant, she had never been. So disturbed and taken aback indeed that he lay awake much of that night.

The next morning he broke his walk into Pewsbury by going into Rosedean, this being the very first time he had ever done such a thing.

He was kept waiting a few moments—as a matter of fact only a very few moments—in the familiar little drawing-room, before Katty, wearing a charming, pale blue dressing-gown, edged with swansdown, joined him.

As was her way, she began speaking at once. "Why, what's the matter?" she exclaimed. "Has anything gone wrong, Godfrey?"

He answered irritably, "No, not that I know of. But I've something to say to you." He pulled out his big, old-fashioned gold repeater. "It's twenty to ten—I thought I'd find you down!"

"I always breakfast upstairs in my own room. But I didn't keep you waiting long——"

She was still a little breathless, for she had come down very quickly.

And then he began, with no preamble: "I want to know if you really meant what you said last night about letting this house furnished for a year? I'm by no means sure if the terms of your lease allow for your doing that; I shall have to look into it after I get to the Bank. Still, I thought I'd better come and see you first."

Katty grew very pink. "Oh, Godfrey!" she exclaimed. "Surely you wouldn't be so unkind——?"

There came over her pretty face that curious, obstinate look which he had already seen there often enough to dread. Also she made him feel ashamed of himself. But how attractive she looked—how fresh and dainty—like a newly opened rose! Katty had twisted up her hair anyhow, but that only made her look younger, and more natural.

"Let's come out into the garden," she said coaxingly. "Surely you can stay for a few minutes? This is the very first time you've ever been to see me in the morning! Why not telephone through and say you've been delayed,—that you can't be at the Bank till eleven?" She was edging him as she spoke towards the corner where, behind a screen, there stood the telephone instrument.

As if compelled to obey, he took up the receiver, and uttered the familiar words, "Pewsbury 4." And at once there came an answer.

"Is that you, Privet? What a comfort it is to know that I can always rely on your being there, whoever else isn't! This is only to say that I have been delayed, and that I don't expect to be at the Bank till eleven."

Then came the calming, comforting answer, "Very good. That'll be all right, sir. There's nothing much doing this morning, from what I could make out when I was looking over your letters just now."

So Godfrey Pavely, feeling rather as if he was being driven along by a pleasant fate, hung the receiver up, and followed the blue-garbed figure out of doors, into a little pleasance now filled with exquisite autumnal colouring, and pungent, searching scents.

In the furthest corner of the walled garden, which was so much older than the house itself, was a tiny lawn surrounded by high hedges. There they could talk without any fear of being overlooked or overheard; and, before her visitor could stop her, Katty had dragged two cane-seated easy chairs out of her little summer-house.

They both sat down, but this time Katty warily remained silent. She was waiting for her companion to begin.

"You weren't serious, were you?" he said at last, and she felt the underlying pain and surprise in his voice. "You don't really mean that you want to go away, Katty? Where would you go to? What would you do? Have the Standens asked you to go abroad again—not for a whole year, surely?"

"No," she said slowly, "not the Standens. If you must know, I've been offered a furnished cottage rent-free by those friends of mine, the Haworths, who live near York. The truth is, I can't afford to keep up Rosedean! I hate saying this to you, but it's the truth."

"If you didn't go away so much——" he began irritably.

But she cut across him sharply, "After all, I've a right to go away if I like! But it isn't that, Godfrey. I've gone into it all—really I have! Even if I never left Rosedean I should still be too poor to go on living here comfortably."

"How much too poor?" he asked.

Katty drew a long breath. In a sense she was speaking at random, but no one would have known it from the tone in which she answered: "About a hundred a year—a little less, a little more."

And then Godfrey Pavely said something which very much surprised Katty. "About that thousand pounds which was left to you the other day," he said hesitatingly.

"Well? That'll only bring in thirty-five pounds a year; you made all the arrangements," she added wearily. "You wouldn't let me have it—as I wanted you to do."

"I couldn't, Katty, you know that! I didn't ask your aunt to make me your trustee."

"Well, that thirty-five pounds won't make any difference."

She was sorry now she had told him of the little house on her generous friends' estate. Perhaps he would offer to let her off the Rosedean rent. But Katty had quite made up her mind to cut the cable, and make a fresh start elsewhere.

"Wait a bit," he said slowly, "women always run on so fast! When I mentioned that thousand pounds, I was not thinking of giving it you, as you call it, to spend. I was thinking of that foreign investment I mentioned to you last week. If you're willing to take the risk, I might stretch a point, for if things go well that thousand pounds might easily be trebled in the course of the next two years. I'm so sure of that, that I'm quite willing to advance you, say, two hundred pounds."

He knew quite well that his proposal was utterly illogical, and bore, so to speak, no relation to the fact that the investment he was proposing might turn up trumps.

Katty's eyes sparkled. She was very fond of ready money, and it was such a long, long time since she had had any. "D'you mean you'd really give me two hundred pounds now?" she asked joyfully.

And Godfrey, with his eyes fixed on the grass, said in a shamed voice, "Yes—that is what I do mean."

Somehow it hurt him to feel how that sum of money, so trifling to him, affected her so keenly. He was better pleased with her next question.

"What sort of an investment exactly is it?"

"It's in the nature of a company promotion," he said slowly. "And of course you must regard anything I tell you about it as absolutely private."

"Yes, I quite understand that!"

He drew a piece of paper out of his pocket. "As a matter of fact I've got a few facts about it jotted down here."

She drew her chair rather nearer to his, and Godfrey Pavely, turning his narrow yet fleshy face towards her, began speaking with far more eagerness and animation than usual. Katty, who was by no means a fool where such things were concerned, listened absorbedly while he explained the rather big bit of financial business in which he was now interested.

After he had been speaking to her without interruption for some minutes, Katty exclaimed: "Yes, I think I see now exactly what you mean! There certainly doesn't seem much risk attached to it—at any rate as regards the start off, as it were. But what made these French bankers pick you out, Godfrey? After all, they're doing you a very good turn."

"I don't exactly know why they picked me out, as you call it——" he spoke hesitatingly. "But during that year I spent in Paris I came across a great many of that sort of people. My father got me the best possible introductions."

The piece of paper on which he had jotted certain notes and calculations was a large piece of thin foreign notepaper covered with small handwriting in the diluted ink which some French business men use.

"Can you read French?" he asked doubtfully.

She answered rather sharply, "Yes, of course I can!" and held out her hand.

The letter, which bore a Paris address, and the date of a fortnight back, was from the French banking house of Zosean & Co. It explained at some length that a client of the bank, a wealthy South American of Portuguese extraction named Fernando Apra, had become possessed of an estate on the coast of Portugal to which was attached a gambling concession. The idea was to make the place a kind of Portuguese Monte Carlo, and the present possessor was very desirous that English capital and English brains should be put into the company. The returns promised were enormous, and there seemed to be little or no risk attached to the business—if it was run on the right lines.

"I have gone into the matter very thoroughly," said Godfrey Pavely, "and I have convinced myself that it's all right. This Fernando Apra already has a London office. I managed to see him there for a few minutes last week. His real headquarters are in Paris."

"And are you finding all the money?" asked Katty eagerly. "Will it be all your money and my thousand pounds, Godfrey? In that case I suppose we shall get all the profits?"

He smiled a little at woman's cupidity. "No," he said, "I haven't been able to find it all myself. But I've managed to get in a very good man. Some one with whom I've done business before, Katty."

"What's his name?" she asked inquisitively.

Godfrey Pavely waited a moment. "I don't know that I ought to tell you—" he said uncomfortably. "He doesn't want to appear in the business."

"Of course you ought to tell me!" All sorts of strange ideas floated through Katty's mind. Was he going to say "Oliver Tropenell"? She rather expected he was.

"Well, I will tell you," he said, "for I know you can hold your tongue. The name of the man who's going into this business with me is Greville Howard."

"D'you mean the big money-lender?" Katty couldn't help a little tone of doubt, of rather shocked surprise, creeping into her voice.

"Yes," he said doggedly, "I do mean the man who was once a great money-lender. He's retired now—in fact he's living——" and then he stopped himself.

"Why, of course!" Katty felt quite excited. "He's living in Yorkshire, near the Haworths! They've often talked about him to me! They don't know him—he won't know anybody. He's a rather queer fish, isn't he, Godfrey?"

"He's absolutely straight about money," exclaimed Godfrey Pavely defensively. "I've had dealings with him over many years. In fact he's the ideal man for this kind of thing. He has all sorts of irons in the fire—financially I mean—on the Continent. He's a big shareholder in the company that runs the Dieppe and Boulogne Casinos."

He got up. "Well, I ought to be going now. It's all right isn't it, Katty? You won't talk again of going away?"

"Could you let me have that two hundred pounds this afternoon?" she asked abruptly.

Godfrey Pavely looked at her with a curious, yearning, rather sad look. Somehow he would have preferred that Katty should not be quite so—so—he hardly formulated the thought to himself—so ready to do anything for money. "Very well," he said. "Very well, my dear"—he very seldom called her "my dear," but he had done so once or twice lately. "I'll bring it this afternoon, in notes."

"That will be kind of you," she said gratefully. "But look here, Godfrey, do take it out of my thousand pounds! Put eight hundred in this thing."

He shook his head and smiled. Women were queer, curiously unscrupulous creatures! "That would be right down dishonest of me, Katty."

They were now walking across the little lawn, which was so securely tucked away, out of sight of any prying window, and before going through the aperture which had been cut in the hedge, they both turned round and clasped hands. "Thank you so—so much," she said softly. "You've been a dear, kind friend to me always, Godfrey."

"Have I?" he said. "Have I, Katty? Not always, I fear."

"Yes, always," and her voice trembled a little.

He bent down and kissed her on the mouth with a kind of shamed, passionate solemnity which moved, and, yes, a little amused her. What queer, curiously scrupulous creatures men were!

"Go now, or you'll be late," she whispered.

And he went.