“Nothing.  The mystery is just as complete as ever.”

“She defied you—­eh?”

Her companion nodded.

“Then how do you now intend to act?”

“That’s just the question I was about to put to you,” he said.  “There is a distinct peril—­one which becomes graver every moment that the girl and young Murie are together.  How are we to avert it?”

“By parting them.”

“Then act as I suggested the other day.  It’s the only way, Winnie, depend upon it—­the only way to secure our own safety.”

“And what would the world say of me, her stepmother, if it were known that I had done such a thing?”

“You’ve never yet cared for what the world said.  Why should you care now?  Besides, it never will be known.  I should be the only person in the secret, and for my own sake it isn’t likely that I’d give you away.  Is it?  You’ve trusted me before,” he added; “why not again?”

“It would break my husband’s heart,” she declared in a low, intense voice.  “Remember, he is devoted to her.  He would never recover from the shock.”

“And yet the other night after the ball you said you were prepared to carry out the suggestion, in order to save yourself,” he remarked with a covert sneer.

“Perhaps I was piqued that she should defy my suggestion that she should go to the ball.”

“No, you were not.  You never intended her to go.  That you know.”

When he spoke to her this man never minced matters.  The woman was held by him in a strange thraldom which surprised many people; yet to all it was a mystery.  The world knew nothing of the fact that James Flockart was without a penny, and that he lived—­and lived well, too—­upon the charity of Lady Heyburn.  Two thousand pounds were placed, in secret, every year to his credit from her ladyship’s private account at Coutts’s, besides which he received odd cheques from her whenever his needs required.  To his friends he posed as an easy-going man-about-town, in possession of an income not large, but sufficient to supply him with both comforts and luxuries.  He usually spent the London season in his cosy chambers in Half-Moon Street; the winter at Monte Carlo or at Cairo; the summer at Aix, Vichy, or Marienbad; and the autumn in a series of visits to houses in Scotland.

He was not exactly a ladies’ man.  Courtly, refined, and a splendid linguist, as he was, the girls always voted him great fun; but from the elder ones, and from married women especially, he somehow held himself aloof.  His one woman-friend, as everybody knew, was the flighty, go-ahead Lady Heyburn.

Of the country-house party he was usually the life and soul.  No man could invent so many practical jokes or carry them on with such refinement of humour as he.  Therefore, if the hostess wished to impart merriment among her guests, she sought out and sent a pressing invitation to “Jimmy” Flockart.  A first-class shot, an excellent tennis-player, a good golfer, and quite a good hand at putting a stone in curling, he was an all-round sportsman who was sure to be highly popular with his fellow-guests.  Hence up in the north his advent was always welcomed with loud approbation.