friends. Me at any rate. Won't you, Mr. Lennox?"

Moistening her lips, mentally she continued: Yes, count on that. But
inwardly she relaxed. Such danger as there may have been had gone. Under
the dribble of the mucilage the fire in his eyes had flickered and sunk.
He was too glued now for revolt. So she thought, but she did not know
him.

During the sticky flow of her words, he knew she was trying to gammon
him. But he knew quite as well that Margaret would make no such attempt,
and he knew it for no other reason than because he knew she was
incapable of it. Incidentally he determined what he would do. Having
determined it, he stood up.

"Very good. I shall expect to hear from Margaret to-morrow. If I do not
hear I will come, and when I come----"

Lennox paused and compressed his lips. The compression finished the
sentence. If come he did, no power of hers, or of any one else, would
budge him an inch until he saw Margaret and had it out with her.

"Good-evening," he added and Mrs. Austen found herself looking at his
retreating back which, even in retreat, was a menace.

"Merciful fathers!" she exclaimed, and, with that sense of humour which
is the saving grace, the dear woman put her hand to her stays. She was
feeling for her heart. She had none. Or any appetite, she presently told
a servant who came to say that dinner was served.

She misjudged herself. For twenty-five minutes, in an adjoining room,
she ate steadily and uncomplainingly. She had bouillon, skate in black
butter, cutlets in curl-papers, sweetbread and cockscombs, a cold
artichoke, hot almond pudding, an apricot, a bit of roquefort, a pint of
claret, a thimble of benedictine and not a twinge, none of the
indigestion of square-dealing, none of gastritis of good faith. She was
a well-dressed ambition, intent on her food. No discomfort therefore. On
the contrary. Margaret was in bed--safe there. Fate and the cook were
kind.

With the taste of the liqueur still in her mouth, she went to her
daughter who was ill with one of those maladies which, being primarily
psychical, science cannot treat. Science is a classification of human
ignorance. It has remedies for the flesh, it has none for the soul. The
remedies exist, but they are dispensed only by the great apothecaries
that time and philosophy are.

At the moment neither was available. Behind Margaret's forehead a
monster crouched and crunched. That was nothing. It was in the tender
places of her h