He loves her.  He loves her still.  He had not repulsed her when she had flung herself into his embrace, and this last moment when he had flung her out of it, that spoke more than all.  He had heard those coming footsteps.  He had thought of her—­her reputation.  That was dear to him.  She gains her own room by a circuitous round, breathless, unseen, secure in her belief of her power over him.  The insatiable vanity of the woman had prevented her from reading between the lines.

Rylton, detesting himself for the necessity for deception, has just seated himself at a writing-table, when Minnie Hescott enters the room.  That astute young woman refrains from a glance round the room.

“Still writing?” says she.

She had told herself when she escaped from the others that she would do a good turn to Tita.  She decided upon not caring what Rylton would think of her.  Men were more easily appeased than women.  She would square him later on, even if her plain speaking offended him now; and, at all events, Tita would be on her side—­would acknowledge she had meant kindly towards her, and even if all failed still something would be gained.  She would have “been even” with Mrs. Bethune.

Miss Hescott’s vocabulary is filled with choice sayings, expressive if scarcely elegant.  Beyond her dislike to Mrs. Bethune, personally—­she might have conquered that—­Minnie is clever—­there is always the fact that Mrs. Bethune is poor, and poor people, as Minnie has learned through a hard philosophy, are never of any use at all.  Mrs. Bethune, therefore, could never advance her one inch on the road to social success; whereas Tita, though she is a mere nobody in herself, and not of half as good birth as Mrs. Bethune, can be of the utmost use as a propeller.

Tita, by happy circumstances, is the wife of a real live Baronet, and Tita is her cousin.  Tita has money, and is very likely to go to town every year in the season, and what more likely than that Tita should take her (Minnie) under her wing next season, present her and marry her?  Delightful prospect.  Her step is quite buoyant as she approaches Rylton and says: 

“Still writing?”

“Yes,” returns Rylton leisurely, to whom Minnie is not dear.

“I’m sorry.  I wanted to say something to you,” says Minnie, who has decided on adopting the unadorned style of conversation, that belongs as a rule to the young—­the unsophisticated.

“If I can be of the slightest use to you,” says Rylton, wheeling round on his chair, “I shall be delighted.”  He had knocked off the blotting paper as he turned, and now stoops to pick it up, a moment that Minnie takes to see that he has no letter half begun before him, and no letter finished either, as the rack on the side of the wall testifies.  Minnie would have done well as a female detective!

“Oh no—­no.  On the contrary, I wanted to be of use to you.”

“To me?”