“Nothing that he has said or could say could interfere with that,” Wingate assured her,—­“at least that is my point of view.”

“And mine!”

“Shall I see you to-day?” he asked.

“I hope so,” she answered.  “Perhaps after luncheon—­”

There was a sound as though the receiver had been taken from her fingers.  Dredlinton himself spoke.

“Look here, Wingate, this is Dredlinton speaking,” he said.  “You won’t let this little affair make any difference to your call upon us on Tuesday morning?”

“Certainly not,” Wingate replied.  “I was thinking of writing you about that, though.  I don’t see any object in my coming.  I think you had better let me off that visit.”

“My dear fellow,” Dredlinton pleaded, “if you don’t come, Phipps will think it is because of last night’s affair and I shall get it in the neck.  I’m in disgrace enough already.  Do, for heaven’s sake, oblige me, there’s a good chap.”

Wingate hesitated for a moment.

“Very well,” he assented, “I will go.  Is that all?”

“That’s all, thanks.”

“I should like to speak to your wife again,” Wingate said.

“Sorry, she’s just gone out,” was the rather malicious reply.  “I’d have kept her for you, if I’d known.  So long!”

A knocking at the door,—­a rather low, suggestive knocking.  Wingate knew that it was an impossibility, but he nevertheless hastened to throw it open.  Miss Flossie Lane stood there, very becomingly dressed in a tailor-made costume of covert coating.  She wore a hat with yellow buttercups, and she had shown a certain reticence as regards cosmetics which amounted to a tacit acknowledgment of his prejudices.

“Miss Lane!” he exclaimed.

She looked at him with wide-open eyes.

“But you were expecting me, weren’t you?” she asked.  “I remembered your inviting me quite well, but I couldn’t remember where you said, so I thought I’d better come and fetch you.  I haven’t done wrong, have I?”

“Most certainly not,” Wingate replied.  “Come in, please.  I’ll ring for a cocktail and send the man down into the restaurant to engage a table.”

She sank into an easy-chair and looked around her, while Wingate did as he had suggested.  The sitting room, filled with trophies of curiously mixed characteristics—­a Chinese idol squatting in one corner, some West African weapons above it, two very fine moose heads over a quaintly shaped fireplace, and a row of choice Japanese prints over the bookcase—­was a very masculine but eminently habitable apartment.  Miss Lane looked around her and approved.

“This is quite the nicest flat in the Court,” she declared, “and I’ve been in so many of them.  How did you find time to furnish it like this?  I thought that you’d only just arrived from America.”

“I come to London often enough to keep this little suite here,” he explained.  “I had it even through the war.  Sometimes I lend it to a friend.  I am one of those domestic people,” he added with a smile, “who like to have a home of some sort to come to at the end of a journey.”