The door which had let the footman into the hall admitted to a spacious foyer which set apart the entrance and—­as the play of the electric torch disclosed—­a deep and richly furnished dining-room.  To one side a broad flight of stairs ascended:  Lanyard went up with the activity of a cat, making no more noise.

The second floor proved to be devoted mainly to a drawing-room, a lounge, and a library, all furnished in a weird, inchoate sort of magnificence, with money rather than with taste, if one might judge fairly by the fitful and guarded beam of the torch.  The taste may have been less questionable than Lanyard thought; but the evidences of luxurious tendencies and wealth recklessly wasted in their gratification were irrefutable.

Lights were burning on the floor above, and a rumour of feminine voices drifted down, interrupted by an occasional sibilant rustle of silk, or a brief patter of high-heeled feet:  noises which bore out the conjecture that madame’s maid was undressing and putting her to bed; a ceremony apt to consume a considerable time with a woman of Liane’s age and disposition, passionately bent on preserving to the grave a semblance of freshness in her charms.  Lanyard reckoned on anything from fifteen minutes to an hour before her couching would be accomplished and the maid out of the way.  Ten minutes more, and Liane ought to be asleep.  If it turned out otherwise—­well, one would have to deal with her awake.  No need to be gravely concerned about that:  to envisage the contingency was to be prepared against it.

Believing he must possess his soul in patience for an indeterminable wait, he was casting about for a place to secrete himself, when a change in the tenor of the talk between mistress and maid was conveyed by a sudden lift of half an octave in the latter’s voice, sounding a sharp note of protest, to be answered by Liane in accent of overbearing anger.

One simply could not rest without knowing what that meant:  Lanyard mounted the second flight of stairs as swiftly, surely, and soundlessly as he had the first.  But just below a landing, where the staircase had an angle, he paused, crouching low, flat to the steps, his head lifted just enough to permit him to see, above the edge of the topmost, a section of glowing, rose-pink wall—­it would be rose-pink!

He could see nothing more; and Liane had already silenced the maid, or rather reduced her to responses feebly submissive, and, consonant with the nature of her kind, was rubbing it in.

“And why should you not go with me to that America if I wish it?” Lanyard heard her say.  “Is it likely I would leave you behind to spread scandal concerning me with that gabbling tongue in your head of an overgrown cabbage?  It is some lover, then, who has inspired this folly in you?  Tell him from me, if you please, the day you leave my service without my consent, it will be a sorry sweetheart that comes to him.”