a _good_ little thing...."

Chapter XVI

While Allerton was making these reflections Steptoe was summoned to
the telephone.

"Is this you, Steptoe? I'm Miss Barbara Walbrook."

Steptoe braced himself. In conversing with Miss Barbara Walbrook he
always felt the need of inner strengthening. "Yes, Miss Walbrook?"

"Mr. Allerton tells me you've a young woman at the house."

"We 'ave a young lydy. Certainly, miss."

"And Mr. Allerton has asked me to call on her."

Steptoe's training as a servant permitted him no lapses of surprise.
"Quite so, miss. And when was it you'd be likely to call?"

"This afternoon about four-thirty. Perhaps you could arrange to have
me see her alone."

"Oh, there ain't likely to be no one 'ere, miss."

"And another thing, Steptoe. Mr. Allerton has asked me just to call as
an old friend of his. So you'll please not say to her that--well,
anything about me. I'm sure you understand."

Steptoe replied that he did understand, and having put up the receiver
he pondered.

What could it mean? What could be back of it? How would this
unsophisticated girl meet so skilful an antagonist. That Miss Walbrook
was coming as an antagonist he had no doubt. In his own occasional
meetings with her she had always been a superior, a commander, to whom
even he, 'Enery Steptoe, had been a servitor requiring no further
consideration. With so gentle an opponent as madam she would order and
be obeyed.

At the same time he could not alarm madam, or allow her to shirk the
encounter. She had that in her, he was sure, which couldn't but win
out, however much she might be at a disadvantage. His part would be to
reduce her disadvantages to a minimum, allowing her strong points to
tell. Her strong points, he reckoned, were innocence, an absence of
self-consciousness, and, to the worldly-wise, a disconcerting candor.
Steptoe analyzed in the spirit and not verbally; but he analyzed.

For Letty the morning had been feverish, chiefly because of her
uncertainty. Was it the wish of the prince that she should go, or was
it not? If it was his wish, why had he not let her? If, on the other
hand, he desired her to stay, what did he mean to do with her? He had
passed her on the way out to breakfast at the Club--she had been
standing in the hall--and he had smiled.

What was the significance of that smile? She sat down in the library
to think. She sat down in the chair she had occupied while he lay on
the couch, an