“I am being watched,” she said to her host.

“You mustn’t mind,” replied Mr. Hazlewood, and the smile came back to her lips as she glanced round the table.

“Oh, I don’t, I don’t,” she said in a low voice, “for I have friends here.”

“And friends who will not fail you, Stella,” said the old man.  “To-night begins the great change.  You’ll see.”

Robert Pettifer puzzled her indeed more than his wife.  She was plain to read.  She was frigidly polite, her enemy.  Once or twice, however, Stella turned her head to find Robert Pettifer’s eyes resting upon her with a quiet scrutiny which betrayed nothing of his thoughts.  As a matter of fact he liked her manner.  She was neither defiant nor servile, neither loud nor over-silent.  She had been through fire; that was evident.  But it was evident only because of a queer haunting look which came and went in her dark eyes.  The fire had not withered her.  Indeed Pettifer was surprised.  He had not formulated his expectations at all, but he had not expected what he saw.  The clear eyes and the fresh delicate colour, her firm white shoulders and her depth of bosom, forced him to think of her as wholesome.  He began to turn over in his mind his recollections of her case, recollections which he had been studious not to revive.

Halfway through the dinner Stella lost her uneasiness.  The lights, the ripple of talk, the company of men and women, the bright dresses had their effect on her.  It was as though after a deep plunge into dark waters she had come to the surface and flung out her arms to the sun.  She ceased to notice the scrutiny of the Pettifers.  She looked across the table to Dick and their eyes met; and such a look of tenderness transfigured her face as made Mrs. Pettifer turn pale.

“That woman’s in love,” she said to herself and she was horrified.  It wasn’t Dick’s social position then or the shelter of his character that Stella Ballantyne coveted.  She was in love.  Mrs. Pettifer was honest enough to acknowledge it.  But she knew now that the danger which she had feared was infinitely less than the danger which actually was.

“I must have it out with Harold to-night,” she said, and later on, when the men came from the dining-room, she looked out for her husband.  But at first she did not see him.  She was in the drawing-room and the wide double doors which led to the big library stood open.  It was through those doors that the men had come.  Some of the party were gathered there.  She could hear the click of the billiard balls and the voices of women mingling with those of the men.  She went through the doors and saw her husband standing by Harold Hazlewood’s desk, and engrossed apparently in some little paper-covered book which he held in his hand.  She crossed to him at once.

“Robert,” she said, “don’t be in a hurry to go to-night.  I must have a word with Harold.”

“All right,” said Pettifer, but he said it in so absent a voice that his wife doubted whether he had understood her words.  She was about to repeat them when Harold Hazlewood himself approached.