y looked as if she did not understand. And indeed she did not.

"You are coming to lunch with us, are you not? Will you let me escort
you?"

"Thank you, Mr. Trent. But--do you mind?--I shall have to call at my
father's house on my way. Just to leave my prayer-book. It will not take
me a minute."

Oliver could not object, although he was not altogether pleased. For Mr.
Brooke's house was immediately opposite the Kenyons', and Miss Ethel was
as likely as not to be sitting at the drawing-room window. Her sharp
eyes would espy him from afar, and she might ask Lesley if he had been
to church with her. Not a very great difficulty, but Oliver had a
far-seeing mind, and one question might lead to others of a more serious
kind.

However, there was no help for it. He paused on the steps of number
fifty, while Lesley rang the bell. She had been formally presented with
a latch-key, but the use of it was so new to her, and the fear of losing
it so great, that she usually left it on her dressing-table.

A maid opened the door and said something to Lesley in an under tone.
Oliver was looking across the street and neither heard the words nor
saw the woman's face. But Lesley turned to him hastily.

"Oh, Mr. Trent, I am so sorry to keep you waiting, but I must run up to
my aunt for a moment."

She disappeared into the house, and then Oliver turned and met the eyes
of Lesley's waiting-maid. And at the same moment he was aware--as one is
sometimes aware of what goes on behind one's back--that Ethel, in her
pretty autumn dress of fawn-color and deep brown, had come out upon the
balcony of her house and was observing him.

"_You_, Mary?" said Oliver, in a stifled whisper.

The woman looked at him with hard, defiant eyes. "Yes, me," she said.
"You ought to know that I couldn't do anything else."

He stood looking at her with a frown.

"This is the last place where you ought to have come," he said.

"Because they are friends of yours?" she asked. "I can't help that. I
didn't know it when I came, but I know it now."

"Then leave," said Oliver, still in the lowest possible tone, but also
with all possible intensity. "Leave as soon as you can. I'll find you
another place. It is the worst thing you can do for your own interest to
remain here, where you may be recognized."

"I can take care of that," said Mary Kingston, icily. "I'll think over
it."

Oliver put his hand into his pocket as if in search of a coin. But
Kingston sudde