, controlling himself, motioned. "Would you mind repeating this to
Jones?"

Cassy's eyebrows arched themselves. "It was hard enough to tell you.
Were it not for your engagement, I wouldn't have said anything. When
dreadful things happen to a girl, people always think that she must be
dreadful herself. Isn't that nice of them? I----"

"See here," Lennox interrupted, "you can't leave it like this. Something
has got to be done. I can give Paliser a hiding and I will. But that
isn't enough. I don't know whether a criminal action will lie, but I do
know that you can get damages and heavy ones."

Cassy's lovely eyes searched the room. "Who was that speaking? It wasn't
you, was it?"

Lennox, recognising the rebuke, acknowledged it. "Forgive me. I forgot
whom I was addressing. Jones will be less stupid. Let us have him in."

But when Jones, immediately requisitioned, appeared, Cassy again putting
down her bundle, protested. "Mr. Lennox regards me as an Ariadne and
expects me to act like a young lady in a department-store. Either role
is too up-stage."

Jones, taken with her mobile mouth, her lovely eyes, the oval of her
handsome face, said lightly: "It seems to me that you might assume any
part."

Lennox struck out. "Paliser hocuspocused her with a fake marriage.
He----"

"Oh," Cassy gently put in, "I have no one to blame but myself. I ought
to have known better."

Jones nodded. "Probably you did know. The misadventure is rare of which
we are not warned in advance. We cannot see the future but the future
sees us. It sends us messages which we call premonitions."

Instantly Cassy was back in the Tamburini's room, where she had seen
both beauty and horror. She had not reached the latter yet and the
sudden vision Lennox dissipated.

"Stuff and nonsense! Haven't you anything else to say?"

Amiably Jones turned to him. "I can say that no one is wise on an empty
stomach." He turned to Cassy. "The Splendor is not far. Will you dine
with us, Mrs. Paliser?"

Violently Lennox repeated it; "Mrs. Paliser! Miss Cara is no more Mrs.
Paliser than you are."

"To err is highly literary," Jones with great meekness replied. "I hear
that it is even human."

Cassy reached again for the bundle. "It is only natural. If I had been
told in advance, I could not have believed it. I could not have believed
that mock marriages occur anywhere except in cheap fiction. But we live
and unlearn. Now I must run."

Lennox took her hand. "I o