a
deeper night....

She started up, stiff and aching, to see a golden wedge of sun on the
floor at her feet. She had slept, then--was it possible?--it must
be eight or nine o'clock already! She had slept--slept like a
drunkard--with that letter on the table at her elbow! Ah, now she
remembered--she had dreamed that the letter was a dream! But there,
inexorably, it lay; and she picked it up, and slowly, painfully re-read
it. Then she tore it into shreds hunted for a match, and kneeling before
the empty hearth, as though she were accomplishing some funeral rite,
she burnt every shred of it to ashes. Nick would thank her for that some
day!

After a bath and a hurried toilet she began to be aware of feeling
younger and more hopeful. After all, Nick had merely said that he was
going away for "a day or two." And the letter was not cruel: there
were tender things in it, showing through the curt words. She smiled
at herself a little stiffly in the glass, put a dash of red on her
colourless lips, and rang for the maid.

"Coffee, Giovanna, please; and will you tell Mr. Strefford that I should
like to see him presently."

If Nick really kept to his intention of staying away for a few days she
must trump up some explanation of his absence; but her mind refused to
work, and the only thing she could think of was to take Strefford into
her confidence. She knew that he could be trusted in a real difficulty;
his impish malice transformed itself into a resourceful ingenuity when
his friends required it.

The maid stood looking at her with a puzzled gaze, and Susy somewhat
sharply repeated her order. "But don't wake him on purpose," she added,
foreseeing the probable effect on Strefford's temper.

"But, signora, the gentleman is already out."

"Already out?" Strefford, who could hardly be routed from his bed before
luncheon-time! "Is it so late?" Susy cried, incredulous.

"After nine. And the gentleman took the eight o'clock train for England.
Gervaso said he had received a telegram. He left word that he would
write to the signora."

The door closed upon the maid, and Susy continued to gaze at her painted
image in the glass, as if she had been trying to outstare an importunate
stranger. There was no one left for her to take counsel of, then--no one
but poor Fred Gillow! She made a grimace at the idea.

But what on earth could have summoned Strefford back to England?

XII

NICK LANSING, in the Milan express, was roused