“Owen is doing the thing well.  Those horses must have cost four hundred.  I know how much the Boucher drawing cost.”

“How do you know there is a Boucher drawing?”

“Because we bid against each other for it at Christie’s.  A woman lying on her stomach, drawn very freely, very simply—­quite a large drawing—­just the thing for such a room as hers is, amid chintz and eighteenth century inlaid or painted tables.”

“I wonder where she is going.  Perhaps to see him.”

“At ten o’clock in the morning!  More likely that she will call at her dressmaker’s on her way to rehearsal.  She is to sing Elizabeth to-morrow night.”  And while discussing her singing, the elder man asked himself if he had ever had a mistress that would compare with her.  “She isn’t by any means a beautiful woman,” he said, “but she’s the sort of woman that if one did catch on to it would be for a long while.”

The young man pitied Evelyn’s misfortune of so elderly an admirer as Owen.  It seemed to him impossible that she could like a man who must be over forty, and the thought saddened him that he might never possess so desirable a mistress.

“I wonder of she’s faithful to him?”

“Faithful to him, after six years of liaison!”

“But, my dear Frank, we know you don’t believe that any woman is straight.  How do you know that he is her lover?  Very often—­”

“My dear Cyril, because you meet her at a ball at Lady Ascott’s, and because she has lived with that Lady Duckle—­an old thing who used to present the daughters of ironmongers at Court for a consideration—­above all, because you want her yourself, you are ready to believe anything.  I never did meet anyone who could deceive himself with the same ease.  Besides, I know all about her.  It’s quite an extraordinary story.”

“How did he pick her up?”

“I’ll tell you presently.  She’s got into her carriage; we shall be able to see if she rouges as she passes.”

Evelyn had noticed the men as she stood trying to explain as much of the way as she could to her somewhat obtuse coachman.  Her bow was gracious as the chestnuts swept the light carriage by them; the young man pleased her fancy for the moment, and she tried to recall the few words they had exchanged as she left the ball.  The elder man was a friend of Owen’s.  But his face was suddenly blotted from her mind.  For if her father were to refuse to see her, if he were to cast her off for good and all, what would she do?  Her life would be unendurable; she would go mad, mad as Margaret.  But the picture did not frighten her, she knew it was fictitious; and looking into her soul for the truth, she saw the trees in the Green Park and the chimney pots of Walsingham House, and she realised that the nearest future is enveloped in obscurity.  She had always dreaded the journey to London; she had been warned against London, and ever since she had consented to come she