“Yes,” said Priam Farll.

She smiled at him with grave sympathy, comfortably and sensibly.  “And right down relieved you must be!” she murmured.  “It must have been very trying for you.”

“In a way,” he answered hesitatingly, “it was.”

Taking off her gloves, she glanced round about her, as a thief must glance before opening the door, and then, leaning suddenly towards him, she put her hands to his neck and touched his collar.  “No, no!” she said.  “Let me do it.  I can do it.  There’s no one looking.  It’s unbuttoned; the necktie was holding it in place, but it’s got quite loose now.  There!  I can do it.  I see you’ve got two funny moles on your neck, close together.  How lucky!  That’s it!” A final pat!

Now, no woman had ever patted Priam Farll’s necktie before, much less buttoned his collar, and still much less referred to the two little moles, one hirsute, the other hairless, which the collar hid—­when it was properly buttoned!  The experience was startling for him in the extreme.  It might have made him very angry, had the hands of Mrs. Challice not been—­well, nurse’s hands, soft hands, persuasive hands, hands that could practise impossible audacities with impunity.  Imagine a woman, uninvited and unpermitted, arranging his collar and necktie for him in the largest public room of the Grand Babylon, and then talking about his little moles!  It would have been unimaginable!  Yet it happened.  And moreover, he had not disliked it.  She sat back in her chair as though she had done nothing in the least degree unusual.

“I can see you must have been very upset,” she said gently, “though he has only left you a pound a week.  Still, that’s better than a bat in the eye with a burnt stick.”

A bat in the eye with a burnt stick reminded him vaguely of encounters with the police; otherwise it conveyed no meaning to his mind.

“I hope you haven’t got to go on duty at once,” she said after a pause.  “Because you really do look as if you needed a rest, and a cup of tea or something of that, I’m quite ashamed to have come bothering you so soon.”

“Duty?” he questioned.  “What duty?”

“Why,” she exclaimed, “haven’t you got a new place?”

“New place!” he repeated after.  “What do you mean?”

“Why, as valet.”

There was certainly danger in his tendency to forget that he was a valet.  He collected himself.

“No,” he said, “I haven’t got a new place.”

“Then why are you staying here?” she cried.  “I thought you were simply here with a new master, Why are you staying here alone?”

“Oh,” he replied, abashed, “it seemed a convenient place.  It was just by chance that I came here.”

“Convenient place indeed!” she said stoutly.  “I never heard of such a thing!”

He perceived that he had shocked her, pained her.  He saw that some ingenious defence of himself was required; but he could find none.  So he said, in his confusion—­