“There’s Cardiff,” said a man who saw him taking his ticket.  “More than ever the joli garcon!”

An hour and a half later one of the somewhat unprepossessing set of domestics attached to the Mansion Hotel, Cheynemouth, undertook to deliver Mr. Lawrence Cardiff’s card to Miss Bell.  She didn’t remember no such name among the young ladies of the Peach Blossom Company, but she would h’inquire.  They was a ladies’ drawin’-room upstairs, if he would like to sit down.  She conducted him to the ladies’ drawing-room, which boasted two pairs of torn lace curtains, a set of dirty furniture with plush trimmings, several lithographs of mellow Oriental scenes somewhat undecidedly poised upon the wall, and a marble-topped centre-table around which were disposed at careful intervals three or four copies of last year’s illustrated papers.  “You can w’yt’ere, sir,” she said, installing him as it were.  “I’ll let you know directly.”

At the end of the corridor the girl met Elfrida herself, who took the card with that quickening of her pulse, that sudden commotion which had come to represent to her, in connection with any critical personal situation, one of the keenest possible sensations of pleasure.  “You may tell the gentleman,” she said quietly, “that I will come in a moment.”  Then she went back into her own room, closed the door, and sat down on the side of the bed with a pale face and eyes that comprehended, laughed, and were withal a little frightened.  That was what she must get rid of, that feeling of fear, that scent of adverse criticism.  She would sit still ’till she was perfectly calm, perfectly accustomed to the idea that Lawrence Cardiff had come to remonstrate with her, and had come because—­because what she had been gradually becoming convinced of all these months was true.  He was so clever, so distinguished, he had his eyes and his voice and his whole self so perfectly under control, that she never could be quite, quite sure—­but now!  And in spite of herself her heart beat faster at the anticipation of what he might be waiting to say to her not twenty steps away.  She hid her face in the pillow to laugh at the thought of how deliciously the interference of an elderly lover would lend itself to the piece of work, which she saw in fascinating development under her hand, and she had an instantaneous flash of regret that she couldn’t use it—­no, she couldn’t possibly.  With fingers that trembled a little she twisted her hair into a knot that became her better, and gave an adjusting pat to the fluffy ends around her forehead.  “Nous en ferons une comedie adorable!” she nodded at the girl in the glass; and then, with the face and manner of a child detected in some mischief who yet expects to be forgiven, she went into the drawing-room.

At the sight of her all that Cardiff was ready to say vanished from the surface of his mind.  The room was already gray in the twilight.  He drew her by both hands to the nearest window, and looked at her mutely, searchingly.  It seemed to him that she, who was so quick of apprehension, ought to know why he had come without words, and her submission deepened his feeling of a complete understanding between them.