“Women,” he said to himself, “are all alike.  They give themselves confounded airs and graces, but when it comes to the point, they aren’t born fools.  She knows jolly well she wouldn’t get another job in a hurry, and here she is.”

But Mr. Slotman made up his mind to go cautiously and carefully.  He would not let Miss Meredyth witness his sense of satisfaction.

“I am glad you have returned, Miss Meredyth.  I felt sure that you would; there’s no reason whatever we shouldn’t get on perfectly well.”

The girl gave him a stiff little inclination of her head.  She had done much personal violence to her sense of pride, yet she had come back because the alternative—­worklessness, possible starvation and homelessness—­had not appealed to her.  And, after all, knowing Mr. Slotman to be what he was, she was forewarned and forearmed.

So Joan came back and took up her old work, and Mr. Slotman practised temporarily a courtesy and a forbearance that were foreign to him.  But Mr. Slotman had by no means given up his hopes and desires.  Joan appealed to him as no woman ever had.  He admired her statuesque beauty.  He admired her air of breeding; he admired the very pride that she had attempted to crush him with.

A woman like that could go anywhere, Slotman thought, and pictured it to himself, he following in her trail, and finding an entry into a society that would have otherwise resolutely shut him out.  For like most men of his type, self made, egregious, and generally offensive, he had an inborn desire to get into Society and mingle with his betters.

On the Monday morning there had been delivered to Hugh Alston by hand a little note from Marjorie; it was on pink paper, and was scented delicately.  If he had not been so very much in love with Marjorie, the pink notepaper might have annoyed him, but it did not.  The faint fragrance reminded him of her.

She wrote a neat and exquisite hand; everything that she did was neat and exquisite, and remembering his hopes of not so long ago, he groaned a little dismally to himself as he reverently cut the envelope.

    “My dear Hugh,

“I have managed to get the address from aunt.  It is ’Miss Joan Meredyth, care Mrs. Wenham, No. 7, Bemrose Square, London, W.C.’  I have been thinking so much about what you said, and hoping that your plan may succeed.  I am sure that you would be very, very happy together....”

(Hugh laughed unmusically.)

“Tom has been here all the afternoon and evening, and aunt has been perfectly charming to him.  Hugh, I know that everything is going to be right now, and I owe it all to you.  You don’t know how grateful I am, dear.  I shall never, never forget your goodness and sweetness to me, dear old Hugh.

      “Your loving
        “Marjorie.”

With something approaching reverent care, Hugh put the little pink-scented note into his pocket-book.