Neither less nor more the dupe of vanity than most men of his years, Lanyard rather liked to think of himself as one whom life had lessoned out of all susceptibility to such emotions as that of surprise, a creature of sophistication cynical but bland, weathered by arduous experience and long contemplation of man the slave of folly and the feeble sport of chance until nothing could amaze him. But this contretemps (he couldn't count it better, remembering the genius of its machinery) flawed the picture; Folly's accents with their more than half-pretended petulance startled him awake to the fact that he had been holding her hands for minutes, gaping like a zany, speechlessly confounded.

"I don't believe you're glad to see me!"

"And I—I'm wondering if I am."

"That's not a very pretty speech," she pouted, tugging at her hands till he had to resign them.

"But everything considered, not an unnatural one. You must know nothing had prepared me . . ."

"That's good—because I'd be dreadfully cross if anything had spoiled the surprise."

"Then you can't be cross with me at all."

"I don't know . . ." the young woman gravely doubted. Instinct with that quenchless spirit of coquetry in default of which she had not been Folly, she posed provocatively to him in the half-light of the window behind her, head daintily aslant, elfin mischief glinting through the dusk that masked her eyes. "I must say you might take it more kindly, seeing how happy it makes me. You don't know how long you've kept me waiting—I'd begun to be afraid you'd backed out of coming after all."

"Then you actually were expecting me for dinner?"

"Of course! without you it wouldn't really be a party."

So much for the suspicion that his escort had mistaken the way and blundered into the wrong premises . . . Then it behooved him to have his wits about him and beware of being misled into taking false steps on such false ground.

"You're an arrant young baggage," Lanyard considered aloud.

"I know—but you're an old hand."

"Then cultivate a bit of reverence for my grey hairs, remember it's not seemly to make mock of your elders."

"Come and sit down, then, beside me." With a chuckle of delight Folly flitted back into the shadows from which she had come, plumped down upon a settee, and patted its vacant cushions with a peremptory hand as Lanyard more deliberately followed. "Do you always insist on having a plot to explain why people request the honour of your presence at their dinners?"

"I have a humble heart," Lanyard protested, sitting; "I am too much mystified to understand why it's termed an honour . . ."

"You're a great bluff—I've told you before. You know very well, most of the people one meets are incurably dull, whereas nothing can cure you of being a most interesting person. That's one reason at least why you're wanted."

"But you are dodging my question. Few people think it an honour to entertain the Lone Wolf—even if they didn't entertain him unawares."

"I don't call that humour," Folly observed, critical. "You can't amuse me by making believe you think I take any stock in all the rotten things people say about you."

"Oh!" Lanyard blankly cried—"you really don't?"

"I should say not—know you better."

Her tone rang true enough, and Lanyard could detect nothing to contradict it in the soft silhouette of her profile against the light.

"It makes me very happy, to think at least one person in the world has faith in me, after all the villainy that's been charged to my account."

"That isn't fair," Folly retorted with spirit: "You never give your friends credit—Morphy doesn't believe it, and neither does Peter."

"To be sure . . . Yes: naturally those two must have talked to you about me."

"You don't suppose they'd have lured you out here to dinner without first getting my permission, do you? If they hadn't, I'd hardly have been so fussed about your being late."

"But that wasn't my fault. I didn't know where I was coming—I could only comfort myself with the reminder that I was in the hands of—as you point out—my friends."

"It doesn't matter. We arranged to make it a late dinner anyway; and furthermore you're not the one who's kept it waiting. Morphy and Peter didn't show up till about ten minutes ago. They had a breakdown or something on the way."

"I was wondering . . ."

"They're upstairs in their rooms now, dressing."

"I hope they don't hurry," Lanyard confessed. "I can spare them a little longer, need time to get my bearings."

"Poor dear!" Folly closed an impulsive hand over Lanyard's. "It is horrid of me to plague you, isn't it? But you know how I love fun . . ." She drew away and made herself prim and meek in her corner. "It's your turn now, I'm perfectly well aware I've got questions by the broadside coming. You may fire when ready."

"But I think you know too well what seems most strange to me . . ."

"All right. I don't mind telling . . . Yes: this is my place. No: I don't own it, I just rent it furnished. From Peter Pagan. He's been such a dear, let me have it for next to nothing for the Summer, and the most perfect staff of servants thrown in."

"I'm sure that sounds just like him."

Lanyard meant it. Since it was manifest that Morphew and Pagan were determined to pluck this poor foolish pigeon, and she was madly bent on being plucked, certainly it had been their book to surround her with a squad of servitors trained to their purpose.

"But that isn't what's most perplexing to you . . ."

"By no means."

"You're perfectly eaten alive by curiosity to know how Morphy got round me, aren't you? Well! but how did he get round you?"

Lanyard weakly parried: "Hasn't he told you?"

"Not in so many words. But of course I understand. How could anybody hold out against such magnanimity?"

"How indeed?"

"You weren't to blame for being so cruelly wrong about him . . . about Mallison and Morphy's having had anything to do with my emeralds, I mean. Everything looked so black for him . . . Even Morphy didn't blame you; only, of course, he was half wild at the time, when you didn't give him a chance to defend himself and prove that Mallison had abused his confidence just as he had mine, only more so. But of course he's told you all about that."

"I am none the less interested to learn what he told you."

"Just what I've said, what you know. He waited weeks before he tried to see me again, and spent simple sloughs of money on detectives, trying to find Mallison and bring him back to prove what an ingrate he'd been. Oh! but I wasn't the only one of Morphy's friends that had suffered through taking Mallison on his endorsement."

"I am sure you were not."

"And then, when he had to give that up as hopeless, he got Liane to ask me to give him a chance to explain; and of course, I could hardly refuse to listen. And he's been just wonderful to me ever since. Really, my friend, you don't know what a fine nature he has. Why! he wouldn't let Liane or Peter tell me a word about what he was doing for you, it was only today I wormed the whole story out of him, after he had brought me the good news."

"'Good news'?"

"About your recovery. And when I think of how he took care of you, all those months, after that terrible motor accident, all the while you were out of your head and the doctors held out no hope you would ever be yourself again—when I think of the way he fought to save your mind—and won!—well!" Folly submitted in a voice of awe—"there aren't any two ways of looking at it: Morphy's a sportsman if there ever was one."

"He is," Lanyard cautiously conceded—"unique."

The young woman sat up with an indignant jerk. "Is there a double meaning to that?" she demanded. "Because if there is—I ought to warn you—you'll end by making me dislike you against my will. Oh! I know Morphy has his shortcomings; but so have we all. And I can't believe you so ungrateful . . ."

"But I would be the last man to deny that I owe Morphew a great deal," Lanyard was able to state with entire sincerity. "And some day—it is my dearest hope some day to be able to repay him as he deserves."

"That's all right, then." Mollified, Folly relaxed. "I'm terribly glad."

"Is it fair to ask why?"

"Because I want you to like him . . . for my sake, you know."

"Afraid I don't know."

"He hasn't told you?"

"I begin to be afraid to ask more questions."

A small gurgle of vanity bubbled out of the shadows. Then Folly thrust a hand into the golden flood that fell through the windows beyond the settee. Upon her third finger a great cabochon emerald shone with soft, unwinking fire.

"It's the finest stone of its kind on this side of the Atlantic," its wearer declared, "outside of my collection. That is, it was outside till Morphy gave it to me."

"You mean—you can't mean you're going to be married—!"

"I don't see what else it can mean—do you?—when we're engaged."

"But are you really in love—?"

"Now really, Mr. Lanyard! do you think it's polite to be so bowled over by the very idea that Morphy could have fallen in love with simple little me?"

"But you—?"

"Well . . ." The suppliant accents of a child caught misbehaving confessed: "you know I've always been crazy about emeralds."

Lanyard let a little space of silence be eloquent for him. When he spoke again it was in another tone, rather a brusque one: "But why the devil did you do that?"

"Oh, I don't know!" Folly sighed in plaintive resentment of such bullying. "He kept asking me, and I didn't know what else to do . . . You weren't there, and I was lonely, and it was raining . . ."