the kitchen. It's ever so late,
Godfrey--after half past seven. Dad _will_ be upset if you're not back to
speak to him before dinner!"

* * * * *

As the two, the tall man and the short boy, walked away into the
darkness, Radmore was possessed by an extraordinary mixture of feelings.
"You've had an escape! You've got well out of what would have been not
only a dangerous but an absurd situation," so whispered a secret, inner
voice. And yet there was a side of him which felt not only balked and
disappointed, but exasperated...

"Do you ever think of people's faces when they're not there?" asked Timmy
suddenly, and then, without waiting for an answer, he went on:--"When I
shut my eyes, before I go quite off to sleep, you know, I see a row of
faces. Sometimes they're people I've never seen at all; but last night I
kept seeing Mrs. Crofton's face, looking just as it looked when Flick ran
in and growled at her the other night. It was such an awful look--I don't
think I shall ever forget it."

As Radmore said nothing, the little boy asked another question: "Do you
think Mrs. Crofton pretty?" This time Timmy waited for an answer.

"Yes, I think she's very pretty. But gentlemen don't discuss ladies and
their looks, old boy."

"Don't they? How stupid of them!" said Timmy. He added a little shyly, "I
suppose a gentleman may talk of his sister?"

Radmore turned hot in the darkness. Was Timmy going to say something of
Betty, and of that old, painful, now he hoped forgotten, episode? But
Timmy only observed musingly:--"You haven't seen Rosamund yet. Of course
we never say so to her, because it might make her vain, but I do think,
Godfrey, that she's very, _very_ pretty."

And then, rather to his companion's discomfiture, his queer little
mind swung back to the woman to whose house they had just been. "Mrs.
Crofton," he observed, with an air of finality, "may be pretty, but she's
got what I call a blotting-paper face."

CHAPTER X

Radmore felt secretly relieved that he and Timmy got home too late for
him to see Mr. Tosswill alone before dinner. And when at last he came
down, just a minute or two late, for he had to do things for himself to
which he had become unaccustomed--unpacking his bag, putting out his
evening clothes, placing of studs in his evening shirt, and so on--he
found what looked to him like a large party of strangers all gathered
together in the dear old drawing-room.