ivable that a young man should go to any place fourteen evenings
running, and upset a friend of his youth out of a canoe, except there
be a lady involved, is perhaps doubtful; but it was more than enough to
show Mr. Sigismund Taylor that the confession he had listened to was
based upon fact, and that Charlie Merceron was the other party to those
stolen interviews, into whose exact degree of heinousness he was now
inquiring. This knowledge caused Mr. Taylor to feel that he was in an
awkward position.

"Now," asked Mrs. Marland, "candidly, Mr. Taylor, can you suppose
anything else than that our friend Charlie was carrying on a very
pronounced flirtation with this dressmaker?"

"Dressmaker?"

"Her friend was, and I believe she was too. Something of the kind,
anyhow."

"You--you never saw the--the other person?"

"No; she kept out of the way. That looks bad, doesn't it? No doubt she
was a tawdry vulgar creature. But a man never notices that!"

At this moment two people were seen approaching. One of them was a man
of middle height and perhaps five-and-thirty years of age; he was stout
and thick-built; he had a fat face with bulging cheeks; his eyes were
rather like a frog's; he leant very much forward as he walked, and
swayed gently from side to side with a rolling swagger; and as his body
rolled, his eye rolled too, and he looked this way and that with a
jovial leer and a smile of contentment and amusement on his face. The
smile and the merry eye redeemed his appearance from blank ugliness,
but neither of them indicated a spiritual or exalted mind.

By his side walked a girl, dressed, as Mrs. Marland enviously admitted,
as really very few women in London could dress, and wearing, in virtue
perhaps of the dress, perhaps of other more precious gifts, an air of
assured perfection and dainty disdain. She was listening to her
companion's conversation, and did not notice Sigismund Taylor, with
whom she was well acquainted.

"Dear me, who are those, I wonder?" exclaimed Mrs. Marland. "She's very
distinguee."

"It's Miss Glyn," answered he.

"What--Miss Agatha, Glyn?"

"Yes," he replied, wondering whether that little coincidence as to the
'Agatha' would suggest itself to anyone else.

"Lord Thrapston's granddaughter?"

"Yes."

"Horrid old man, isn't he?"

"I know him very slightly."

"And the man--who's he?"

"Mr. Calder Wentworth."

"To be sure. Why, they're engaged, aren't they? I saw it in the paper."