“Picnic this afternoon; going along?” asked Lord Monckton, pausing by the portieres.

“Really, I am not a guest here; I am only private secretary to Mrs. Killigrew.  If they treat me as a human being it is because they believe that charity should not play in grooves.”

“Ah!  We are all open to a little charity.”

“That’s true enough.  Good morning.”

“Beggar!” murmured Lord Monckton as he let the portieres fall behind him.

“Blighter!” muttered Thomas, staring malevolently at the empty doorway.  He would be glad when Mr. and Mrs. Crawford and the artist came down.  Forbes was a chap you could get along with anywhere, under any conditions.

Some time later Kitty came in.  She crossed immediately to the desk.  As Thomas looked up, she smiled at him.  It was the first smile of the kind he had witnessed, coming in his direction, since before that blunder on the tennis-courts.

“I found Lord Monckton’s monocle, Mr. Webb.  Will you be so kind as to give it to him?”

“Yes, Miss Killigrew.”  Absently he raised the monocle and squinted through it.  “Why, it’s plain glass!” he exclaimed.

“So it is,” replied Kitty, with a crooked smile.  “And I dare say so are most of the monocles we see.  A silly affectation, don’t you think so?”

He was instantly up in arms.  The monocle was a British institution, and he would as soon have denied the divine right of kings as question an Englishman’s right to wear what he pleased in his eye.

“It was originally designed for a man whose left eye was weaker than the right.  Besides, we don’t notice them over there.”

“I have often wondered what the wearers do when their noses itch.”

“Doubtless they scratch them.”

Kitty’s laughter bubbled.  It subsided instantly.  Her hand reached out, then dropped.  She had almost said:  “Thomas, what have you done with my sapphires?” Urgent as the impulse was, she crushed it back.  For deep in her heart she wanted to believe in Thomas; wanted to believe that it was only a mad wager such as Englishmen propose, accept and see to the end.  There was not the slightest doubt in her mind that Thomas and Lord Monckton were the two men who had stood on the curb that foggy night in London.  One had taken the necklace and the other had wagered he would carry it six months in America before returning it to its owner.  The Nana Sahib’s ruby she attributed to a real thief, who had known Crawford in former days and, conscience-stricken, had returned it.

Great Britain was an empire of wagerers she knew; they wagered for and against every conceivable thing which had its dependence on chance.

That first night on board the Celtic, when Thomas came to her cabin in the dark, she had recognized his voice.  In the light the activity of the eye had dulled the keenness of the ear; but in the dark the ear had found the chord.  For days she had been subconsciously waiting to hear one or the other of those voices; and Thomas’ had come with a shock.  The words “Aeneid” and “Enid” had so little variation in sound between them that Kitty had found her second man in Lord Monckton.  Sooner or later she would trap them.