him yet. She doesn't want me to speak to him about it.
She thinks it might only make things worse. Says I've got a blunt
way that 'ud ruffle what little patience he's got."

Sally looked directly, deeply into his eyes.

"You really think it is serious?" she said. "I suppose it wouldn't
have been possible for her to have imagined it?"

"Imagined it? No! Why? What should she have imagined it for? We
Traills haven't got an ounce of imagination between us. How could
she imagine it? What good would it do her? A woman doesn't hesitate
and stumble and drag a thing out of her with tears in her eyes, hating
to talk about it, when the whole business is only a tissue of her
imagination. Besides, what would she gain by it?"

"Your sympathy," Sally replied.

Traill walked into his bedroom with a laugh.

"A deuced lot she really cares about my sympathy," he exclaimed. "I
assure you Dolly's not a sentimentalist. She only wants to cling to
her rung of the ladder, that's all."

That was all, and Sally knew it; but she could say no more. She had
tried to plant the seed of suspicion in his mind. She had failed.
The ambitions which were a motive to all his sister's actions, he
could see well enough; but to the means she used in gratifying them,
he was blind. And Sally, though she knew nothing, dared not attempt
the opening of his eyes.

"Are you going to change now?" she asked.

He mumbled an affirmative. She realized, sensitively, that his mind
was pre-occupied with other things and, quietly, she crept out of
the room, upstairs to the other floor where she stood, looking out
of the window, finding her eyes watching the women who were wheeling
round the corner of the Circus into Piccadilly, with skirts tight
gripped about them, little reticule bags swinging with their
ungainly walk, heads alert to follow any direction that their eyes
might prompt them.

When Traill looked into his sitting-room a few moments later, looked
through the opening front of a white shirt which he was in the process
of dragging over his head, she had gone.

"What are you going to do with yourself this evening, Sally?" he asked,
before his head was free of the folds of the stiff, starched linen.
No answer was given him. Then, when he found he was alone, he cursed
volubly at the intractable shirt. The words steadied on his lips as
a knock fell on the door. He marched across the room as he was, holding
up his garments with one hand and flung it open--on