catch any
sound from upstairs, her eyes were on the door.

As she hurried across the hall, the man came forward.

"Do you require a cab, madam?" he asked a little doubtfully.

"No. Just open the door!"

Still with a shade of uncertainty he obeyed, and at the same instant
Deerehurst's voice sounded from the head of the stairs.

What he said--whether he addressed her or the servant--Clodagh never
knew. At the mere sound of his high, thin tones she went blindly
forward through the open door.

As she passed down the steps, a cab wheeled round the corner of Carlton
House Terrace. Instinctively she looked towards it, still animated by
the desire for flight. But the next instant she looked away again,
realising that it already held a fare, and that there was luggage on
the roof.

In the perturbation of the moment she failed to see, what was
infinitely more material, that the occupant of the cab was Valentine
Serracauld; that he had leant forward in sudden, eager curiosity as she
passed down the steps of the house to which he was driving; and that,
as she turned her head in his direction, he had drawn quickly back into
the shadow of his seat.

CHAPTER XVI

Almost immediately a second cab appeared, and, finding it at her
disposal, Clodagh hailed it eagerly and gave the address of the flat.

As the horse sped away in the direction of her home, she sat almost
motionless, her only gesture being to lift her hands to her eyes from
time to time, as if to shut out some near and unpleasant vision. Life
in its crudest, its most repulsive aspect stared at her out of the
darkness. She sat crushed by the disillusionment of the last hour.

And a new furtiveness--born of the new realisation--assailed her when
at last she stepped from the cab at her own door. With an instinctive
lessening of her natural fearlessness, she hurried through the
vestibule and passed straight to the lift. Gaining her own door, she
let herself in by her latch-key, and then paused, looking fearfully and
eagerly about, in expectation of some unwished-for sound. But
everything in the flat was still; and crossing the hall, she entered
her own room. The electric light had been switched on and the place set
in order, and Simonetta sat at the dressing-table, mending a piece of
lace.

"No one has come back?" Clodagh asked.

"No one, signora." Simonetta arose and turned to her mistress.

Seeing the expression on her face, Clodagh nervously anticipat