tered the rose pink sleeping-room where the couch
had been designed by love, and the colouring reflected by the great
mirrors by passion; to slip from out her perfumed raiment, and step
down into the pink marble Roman bath and hide beneath the rose-tinted
waters, the rose-tinted glory of her perfect body.

CHAPTER XXVI

And just as the dead cheetah was laid at Jill's feet, a huge bull dog,
with a face like a gargoyle to be seen on the Western transept of
Notre-Dame, and a chest like a steel safe, supported on legs which had
given way under the weight, walked across from Sir John Wetherbourne,
Bart., of Bourne Manor, and other delectable mansions, to lay his
snuffling, stertorous self at the feet of his mistress, the Honourable
Mary Bingham, pronounced Beam, in whose sanctum sat the man on the
bleak November evening, and of whom he had just asked advice.

People always asked advice of Mary, she was of that kind. On this
occasion she sat looking across at the man she loved, and had always
loved, just as he loved and had always loved her, since the days they
had more or less successfully followed the hounds on fat ponies. She
sat meditatively twisting a heavy signet ring up and down her little
finger. _The_ finger, the one which advises the world of the fact that
some man in it has singled you out of the ruck as being fit for the
honour of wifehood, was unadorned, showing neither the jewels which
betoken the drawn-up contract, nor the pure gold which denotes the
contract fulfilled. Those two had grown up in the knowledge that they
would some time marry, though never a word had been uttered, and being
sure and certain of each other, they had never worried, or forced the
pace. And then Jill had disappeared! Gone was their pal, their little
sister whom they had petted and spoiled from the day she too had
appeared on a fat pony, gone without a trace, leaving these two honest
souls, in a sudden unnecessary burst of altruism, to come to a mutual,
unspoken understanding that their love must be laid aside in folds of
soft tissue, that they must turn the key upon their treasure, until
such time as definite news of the lost girl should allow them to bring
it out with decency, and deck it with orange blossom. And worry having
entered upon them, they both suddenly discovered that uncertainty is a
never-failing aperitif, and they both hungered for a care-free hour
like unto those they had carelessly let slip.

Foolish