e had never seen her. She
must have expected it, too, he thought. She must have known Ashton's
position all along. He followed his friend out of the room.

"You haven't told me her address," he said suddenly.

He decided that it would be better to send the letter--he did not want
to see her. He hated a scene as much as Ashton did.

Ashton was at the top of the stairs.

"It's on the letter. What have you done with it?"

There was an irritable note in his voice. "Don't leave it lying there
for that man of yours to see."

Micky went back into the room. The letter lay on the table where
Ashton had thrown it down.

He picked it up, glancing casually at the written address as he did
so. Then suddenly his tall figure stiffened, and a curiously blank
look filled his eyes, for the name scribbled there in Ashton's writing
was--

"Miss Esther Shepstone," and, below it, the number of the very horrid
boarding-house in the Brixton Road.

CHAPTER II

Micky stood staring at the envelope in his hand. He felt as if
something had happened to paralyse all power of action.

Esther Shepstone and Ashton's girl from Eldred's were one and the
same; that was all he could grasp, and it sounded absurd and
impossible.

He had heard so much of this girl--Ashton had talked about her times
without number--Lallie he had called her; now he came to think of it,
Micky could not remember having ever heard her spoken of by any other
name; and Lallie and Esther Shepstone were one and the same.

Was this, then, why she had cried, because of Ashton...?

Ashton called to him impatiently from the stairs.

"What the deuce are you doing? I shall miss my train."

Micky roused himself with a start, and, dropping the letter into his
pocket, went slowly out of the room; he felt as if he could not have
hurried had his life depended upon it; there was an absurdly cold sort
of feeling round his heart.

It was ridiculous, of course; it was nothing to him if the girl with
whom he had dined an hour ago loved Ashton; he had never seen her
before. That sounded an absurd truth, too; it seemed impossible that
until this evening he and she had never met.

"For heaven's sake, hurry up, man," said Ashton again sharply.

He was at the bottom of the stairs; the face he turned over his
shoulder to Micky looked pale and harassed.

Micky quickened his steps and joined his friend in the porch below;
they stood together out on the path waiting for a taxi