--Dunwoodie?"

Lennox looked and nodded. "Cantillon is in Dunwoodie's office. He asked
me to give him my law business." Indifferently, with the air of one
considering the improbable, Lennox added: "Some day I may. Good-night."

But in the night into which he then went, already that day was breaking.

IX

That same evening, as Lennox was leaving the club, Mrs. Austen, rising
from the dinner-table, preceded Margaret into the drawing-room and
looked at the clock, a prostrate nymph, balancing a dial on the soles of
her feet. At the figures on the dial, the nymph pointed a finger.

From the clock Mrs. Austen turned and exclaimed at the windows which she
had already examined. "The jardinieres have not yet been attended to! It
is inconceivable!"

Margaret, who had seated herself, said: "You might send for the
manager."

"He would only keep me waiting and then expect me to tell him what I
wanted. He ought to know. Besides, I might have forgotten. It is very
tiresome."

Margaret stood up. "I will tell him."

With a click, Mrs. Austen unfurled a fan and, with another click,
refurled it. "No. I will see him myself. I am quite in the humour."

Margaret looked after her mother, who was leaving the room. The sudden
tempest in a flowerpot surprised her. But the outer door closed.
Margaret reseated herself. Presently he would come and together they
would make those plans that lovers make--and then unmake, unless,
elsewhere, they have been made for them.

Meanwhile she waited. The incident at the Sandringham, the sight of
Cassy, her mother's facile insinuations, these things had distressed
her, because, and only because, they had prevented her from enjoying the
innocent pleasure of the innocent visit to the rooms of her betrothed,
whom she loved with a love that was too pure and too profound, to
harbour doubt and suspicion and that evil child of theirs which jealousy
is. Her faith was perfect. That faith showed in her face and heightened
her beauty with a candour that should have disarmed her mother, who, in
the hall below, was, at that moment, instructing a man and not about
flower-boxes either.

"Mr. Lennox, you may know him, by sight I mean, will be coming here
shortly. Please have him shown into that room there."

Mrs. Austen passed on. The little room at which she had glanced that
afternoon received her--a hospitality in which a mirror joined. The
latter welcomed her with a glimpse of herself. It was like me