le to discover the
address easily enough without his help. Yet no such reflection seemed to
make the least difference. From the days of his earliest boyhood, from
the time when he had flung himself into the struggle, money had always
meant much to him, money not for its own sake but as the key to those
things which he coveted in life. Yet at that moment something stronger
seemed to have asserted itself.

"You will come?" she whispered, passing her arm through his. "We will be
there in less than five minutes, and I will write you the cheque before
you tell me anything."

He moved towards the door indeed, but he drew a little away from her.

"Madam," he said, "I am sorry to seem so obstinate, but I thought I had
made you understand some time ago. I do not feel at liberty to tell you
anything without that young lady's permission."

"You refuse?" she cried, incredulously. "You refuse a hundred pounds?"

He opened the door of the car. He seemed scarcely to have heard her.

"At about eleven o'clock to-morrow morning," he announced, "I shall have
the pleasure of calling upon you. I trust that you will have decided to
take the house."

CHAPTER VI. QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

Tavernake sat a few hours later at his evening meal in the tiny
sitting-room of an apartment house in Chelsea. He wore a black tie, and
although he had not yet aspired to a dinner coat, the details of his
person and toilet showed signs of a new attention. Opposite to him was
Beatrice.

"Tell me," she asked, as soon as the small maid-servant who brought in
their first dish had disappeared, "what have you been doing all day?
Have you been letting houses or surveying land or book-keeping, or have
you been out to Marston Rise?"

It was her customary question, this. She really took an interest in his
work.

"I have been attending a rich American client," he announced, "a
compatriot of your own. I went with her to Grantham House in her own
motor-car. I believe she thinks of taking it."

"American!" Beatrice remarked. "What was her name?"

Tavernake looked up from his plate across the little table, across the
bowl of simple flowers which was its sole decoration.

"She called herself Mrs. Wenham Garner!"

Away like a flash went the new-found peace in the girl's face. She
caught at her breath, her fingers gripped the table in front of her.
Once more she was as he had known her first--pale, with great terrified
eyes shining out of a haggard face