o outside eyes the same couple who had pulled
together for successful years of marriage; and if some whisper, for
whispers carry far in the East, came after them, no one regarded it, and
the Copplestone incident was considered permanently closed. Draycott
Wilder was the same silent man who was the despair of his dinner
partners, and Clarice had her old brilliancy and her old way of making
men pleased with themselves; and though some people, chiefly young
girls, described her as "hard," she represented a centre of attraction,
and her one mad year was a thing of the past.

Among the men who went to the terraced house in its huge gardens, she
always particularly welcomed Hartley, the Head of the Police. He never
demanded effort, and he had a good nature and a flow of small talk.
Nearly every woman liked Hartley, though very few of them could have
said why. He had fair, fluffy hair and a pink face; he was just weak
enough to be easily influenced, and he fell platonically in love with
every new woman he met without being in the least faithless to the
others. Mrs. Wilder had a corner in her heart for him, and he, in
return, looked upon Mrs. Wilder as a brilliant and lovely woman very
much too good for Draycott. He did not know that he took his ideas from
her whenever she wished him to do so; Mrs. Wilder, like a clever
conjurer, palmed her ideas like cards, and upheld the principle of free
will while she did so, and if she had desired to impress Hartley with
fifty-two new notions he would have left her positive in his own mind
that they were his own.

Thus, Clarice Wilder may be classed as that melodramatic type that goes
about labelled "dangerous," only she had the wit to take off the label
and to advertise herself under the guise of a harmless soothing mixture.

The bungalow in which the Wilders lived was an immense place, standing
over a terraced garden beautifully planted with flowers. Steps, covered
with white marble, led from terrace to terrace, and down to a
jade-green lake where water-lilies blossomed and pink lotus flowers
floated. Dark green trees plumed with shaded purple flowers accentuated
the massed yellow of the golden laburnums. The topmost flight of steps
led up to the house, and was flanked on either side with variegated
laurel growing in sea-green pots, and the red avenue, that took its
lengthy way from the main road, curved into a wide sweep outside the
flower-hung veranda.

Hartley arrived at the house