e but Henry. It
isn't fair, you know."

"To whom isn't it fair?" Philippa demanded.

"To Mr. Lessingham."

Philippa was thoughtful for a few moments.

"Perhaps," she admitted, "that is a point of view which I have not
sufficiently considered."

Helen pressed home her advantage.

"I don't think you realise, Philippa," she said, "how madly in love with
you the man is. In a perfectly ingenuous way, too. No one could help
seeing it."

"Then where does the unfairness come in?" Philippa asked. "It is within
my power to give him all that he wants."

"But you wouldn't do it, Philippa. You know that you wouldn't!" Helen
objected. "You may play with the idea in your mind, but that's just as
far as you'd ever get."

Philippa looked her friend steadily in the face. "I disagree with you,
Helen," she said. Helen set down the glass which she had been in the act
of raising to her lips. It was her first really serious intimation of
the tragedy which hovered over her future sister-in-law's life. Somehow
or other, Philippa had seemed, even to her, so far removed from that
strenuous world of over-drugged, over-excited feminine decadence, to
whom the changing of a husband or a lover is merely an incident in
the day's excitements. Philippa, with her frail and almost flowerlike
beauty, her love of the wholesome ways of life, and her strong
affections, represented other things. Now, for the first time, Helen was
really afraid, afraid for her friend.

"But you couldn't ever--you wouldn't leave Henry!"

Philippa seemed to find nothing monstrous in the idea.

"That is just what I am seriously thinking of doing," she confided.

Helen affected to laugh, but her mirth was obviously forced. Their
conversation ceased perforce with the return of Mills into the room.

Then the wonderful thing happened. The windows of the dining room faced
the drive to the house and both women could clearly see a motor car turn
in at the gate and stop at the front door. It was obviously a hired
car, as the driver was not in livery, but the tall, mulled-up figure
in unfamiliar clothes who occupied the front seat was for the moment a
mystery to them. Only Helen seemed to have some wonderful premonition of
the truth, a premonition which she was afraid to admit even to herself.
Her hand began to shake. Philippa looked at her in amazement.

"You look as though you had seen a ghost, Helen!" she exclaimed. "Who on
earth can it be, coming at this time of the