orsewhip went out with Victoria. Posting your
man was always rather coffee-house and a rough-and-tumble very hooligan.
If I were you, which I am not, but if I were, I would adopt
contemporaneous methods. To-day we just sit about and backbite. That is
progress. Let me commend it to you."

With a wide movement, Lennox swept the papers, shoved them into a pocket
and stood up.

Jones also stood up. "Got an appetite? Well, dining has the great
disadvantage of taking it away. Come along."

Lennox put on his hat. "I am going first to Park Avenue."

No you're not, thought Jones, who, with an agility which for him was
phenomenal, hurried to the door and backed against it.

Lennox motioned him aside.

Jones, without budging, lied. "They're out of town." It was very
imbecile. He knew it was, knew, too, that Lennox knew it, and, for the
imbecile lie, he substituted another. "I mean they are dining out."

"What the devil are you driving at?" Lennox asked, and not very civilly
either.

"A windmill, I suppose. You look like one. I----"

Jones broke off. The expression on Lennox' face arrested him. The
attempt at interference, the stupid evasions, the conviction which these
things produced, that there was something behind them, something
secreted, something about Margaret that Jones knew and which he was
concealing, made him livid.

"Out with it."

Jones looked at him, looked away, adjusted his neckcloth, vacated the
door, crossed the room and sat down. He did not know to what saint to
vow himself. But realising that it was all very useless, that everything
is, except such solicitude as one pilgrim may show to another, and that,
anyway, Lennox would soon hear it, he gave it to him.

"She is engaged to Paliser."

Lennox, who was approaching, stopped short. "Miss Austen is?"

Jones nodded.

"To Paliser?"

But it seemed too rough and, to take the edge off, Jones added. "It may
not be true."

"How did you hear?"

"Verelst told me. He dined there last night."

Lennox turned on his heel. Futilely in that hell to which one may look
back and see that it was not hell but purgatory prior to paradise,
futilely there he had sought the reason of his damnation. A few minutes
before he had thought that Cassy's story revealed it. In the light of it
he had seen himself condemned, as many another has been, for crimes
which he had not committed. But he had seen, too, the order of release.
He had only a word to say. He was going