trayed him, led him perhaps to ruin? Some day her
passion would leap up, she would tell him, they would be face to face,
injured man and taunting woman. Davenant had an ugly vision as he sat
there. He saw the man's eyes catch fire, the muscles of his face twitch,
he saw Ernestine shrink back, white with terror and the man followed
her.

"Cecil! Aren't you well? you're looking positively ghastly!"

He pulled himself together--it had been a very realistic little
interlude.

"Bad headache!" he said, smiling. "By the by, I must go!"

"If you ever did such a thing as work," she remarked, "I should say that
you, had been doing too much. As it is, I suppose you have been sitting
up too late. Goodbye. I am so glad that you were here to meet Mr. Trent.
Mr. Davenant is my cousin, you know," she continued, turning to her
visitor, "and he is almost the only one of my family who has not cast me
off utterly."

Davenant made his adieux with a heavy heart. He hated the hypocrisy with
which he hoped for Scarlett Trent's better acquaintance and the latter's
bluff acceptance of an invitation to look him up at his club. He walked
out into the street cursing his mad offer to her and the whole business.
But Ernestine was very well satisfied.

She led Trent to talk about Africa again, and he plunged into the
subject without reserve. He told her stories and experiences with a
certain graphic and picturesque force which stamped him as the possessor
of an imaginative power and command of words for which she would
scarcely have given him credit. She had the unusual gift of making the
best of all those with whom she came in contact. Trent felt that he was
interesting her, and gained confidence in himself.

All the time she was making a social estimate of him. He was not by any
means impossible. On the contrary there was no reason why he should not
become a success. That he was interested in her was already obvious, but
that had become her intention. The task began to seem almost easy as she
sat and listened to him.

Then he gave her a start. Quietly and without any warning he changed the
subject into one which was fraught with embarrassment for her. At his
first words the colour faded from her cheeks.

"I've been pretty lucky since I got back. Things have gone my way a
bit and the only disappointment I've had worth speaking of has been in
connection with a matter right outside money. I've been trying to find
the daughter of that old par