. I know I
wouldn't."

And to cut off my reply she clapped the receiver of the telephone to her
ear and called up Eleanor, with whom she proceeded to arrange a date for
the interview. Presently she screwed her head round.

"She says she can come at four this afternoon. Will that suit you?"

"Perfectly," said I.

When she replaced the receiver I stepped behind her and put my hands on
her shoulders.

"'The mother of mischief,'" I quoted, "'is no bigger than a midge's
wing,' and the grandmother is the match-making microbe that lurks in
every woman's system."

She caught one of my hands and looked up into my face.

"You're not cross with me, Simon?"

Her tone was that of the old Agatha. I laughed, remembering the
policeman's salute of the previous night, and noted this recovery of
my ascendancy as another indication of the general improvement in the
attitude of London.

"Of course not, Tom Tit," said I, calling her by her nursery name. "But
I absolutely forbid your thinking of playing Fairy Godmother."

"You can forbid my playing," she laughed, "and I can obey you. But you
can't prevent my thinking. Thought is free."

"Sometimes, my dear," I retorted, "it is better chained up."

With this rebuke I left her. No doubt, she considered a renewal of my
engagement with Eleanor Faversham a romantic solution of difficulties.
I could only regard it as preposterous, and as I walked back to Victoria
Street I convinced myself that Eleanor's frank offer of friendship
proved that such an idea never entered her head. I took vehement pains
to convince myself Spring had come; like the year, I had awakened from
my lethargy. I viewed life through new eyes; I felt it with a new heart.
Such vehement pains I was not capable of taking yesterday.

"It has never entered her head!" I declared conclusively.

And yet, as we sat together a few hours later in Agatha's little room a
doubt began to creep into the corners of my mind. In her strong way
she had brushed away the scandal that hung around my name. She did not
believe a word of it. I told her of my loss of fortune. My lunacy
rather raised than lowered me in her esteem. How then was I personally
different from the man she had engaged herself to marry six months
before? I remembered our parting. I remembered her letters. Her presence
here was proof of her unchanging regard. But was it something more? Was
there a hope throbbing beneath that calm sweet surface to which I did
not re