He read the letter a second time in his office, standing up against the shut door.  Then his eye wandered to the desk and he saw that an envelope had been placed with mathematical exactitude in the middle of his blotting-pad.  ‘Ryley!’ he thought.  This other letter was marked private, and as the envelope said ‘John Stanway, Esq.,’ without an address, it must have been brought by special messenger.  It was from David Dain, and stated that the difficulty as to the title of the house had been settled, that the mortgage would be sent in for Mrs. Stanway to sign that night, and that Stanway might safely draw against the money to-morrow.

‘My God!’ he exclaimed, pushing his hat back from his brow.  ’What a chance!’

In five minutes he was drawing cheques, and simultaneously planning how to get over the disappearance of the old private ledger in case Twemlow should after all, at some future date, ask to see original documents.

‘What a chance!’ The thought ran round and round in his brain.

As he left the works by the canal side, he paused under Shawport Bridge and furtively dropped the revolver into the water.  ‘That’s done with!’ he murmured.

He saw now that his preparations for departure, which at the moment he had deemed to be so well designed and so effective, were after all ridiculous.  No amount of combustion could have prevented the disclosure at an inquest of the ignominious facts.

* * * * *

During tea he laughed loudly at Milly’s descriptions of the hockey match, which had been a great success.  Leonora had kept goal with distinction, and admitted that she rather enjoyed the game.

‘So it is arranged?’ said Leonora, with a hint of involuntary surprise, when he handed her the mortgage to sign.

‘Didn’t I tell you so this morning?’ he answered loftily.  There is always a despicable joy in resuscitating a lie which events have changed into a truth.

He insisted on retiring early that night.  In the bedroom he remarked:  ’Your friend Twemlow’s had to go to London to-day, and may return straight from there to New York.  I had a note from him.  He sent you his kindest regards and all that sort of thing.’

‘Then we mayn’t see him again?’ she said, delicately fingering her hair in front of the pier-glass.

CHAPTER VI

COMIC OPERA

Early one evening a few weeks later, Leonora, half attired for the gala night of the operatic performance, was again delicately fingering her hair in that large bedroom whose mirrors daily reflected the leisured process of her toilette.  Her black skirt trimmed with yellow made a sudden sharp contrast with the pale tints of her corset and her long bare arms.  The bodice lay like a trifling fragment on the blue-green eiderdown of her bed, a pair of satin shoes glistened in front of the fire, and two chairs bore the discarded finery of the day.  The dressing-table was littered with silver and ivory.  A faint and charming odour of violets mingled mysteriously with the warmth of the fire as Leonora moved away from the pier-glass between the two curtained windows where the light was centred, and with accustomed hands picked up the bodice apparently so frail that a touch might have ruined it.