Presently she began to move about the room and collect her clothes.  At half-past nine she had left the boarding-house and departed without leaving any address behind her.  At ten o’clock a great automobile swung round the corner, stopped before the door, and Mr. Mildmay descended and ran lightly up the steps.  Miss Longworth had gone away, he was told by the shabby German waiter in soiled linen coat and greasy black trousers.  She had left no address.  She had left no message for any one who might be calling for her.  The largest tip which he had ever received could only send him into the inner regions to interview the proprietress, who came out and confirmed his words.  Mildmay turned slowly around and drove away.

* * * * *

Stella and Norris Vine lunched together that day in a small West End restaurant.  He had telephoned asking her to come, and she had at once thrown over another engagement.  They were scarcely seated before he asked her a question.

“Do you know that your cousin is in London?”

“What!  Virginia?” Stella exclaimed.

He nodded, and Stella was genuinely amazed.

“Whom did she come with?” she asked.  “What does she want here?”

“She came alone, poor little thing,” he answered, “and on a wild-goose chase.  I never heard anything so pathetic in my life.  She ought to be in short frocks, playing with her dolls, and she has come here four thousand miles to a city she knows nothing of, to steal back—­well, you know what.  One could laugh if it were not so pathetic.”

“Little fool!” Stella said, half contemptuously, and yet with a note of regret in her tone.

“I thought, perhaps,” Vine said, “you might find out where she is and go and talk common sense to her.  If there is anything else we can do, I’d like to, only I hate the thought of a pretty child like that wandering about London on such an absurd quest.”

“Do you know where she is to be found?” Stella asked quietly.

“I have no idea,” Vine answered.  “The last time I saw her was in my own rooms.  I am only sorry that I let her go.”

Stella looked up at him quickly.

“Your own rooms!” she repeated.  “What do you mean?”

“Well,” he answered, “with the extraordinary luck which comes sometimes to babies, she overheard two men talking about me and arranging to meet at a certain hour at my flat.  She actually had the nerve to be there herself at the same time.  While she sat in my sitting-room, they waited in the bedroom.  Mind, a great part of this may be her invention.  I have only her word for it, but she certainly seemed as though she were telling the truth.  I rang up for some one to bring me a change of clothes, and she answered the telephone.  What she said to me sounded such rank nonsense that I jumped in a hansom and went straight back to my rooms.  However, the men who were listening gathered from what she said that I was not coming back, and they gave it up and stole out.  When I returned I found her waiting there, and she demanded that I should give her up the paper she wanted as a matter of gratitude.”