“I’ll tell you,” whispers she.  “You love me because you would be the most ungrateful wretch on earth unless you did.  You give me some of your love; I give you all mine.  I have no one else.”

“That is your own fault,” says Margaret, still trying to scold her, actually believing she is doing it, whilst with her eyes and mouth she is smiling at her.

“Not another word, not one,” says Tita.  “And promise me you won’t ask me to see him again.  I hate him!  He sets my nerves on edge.  I think he is actually ugly."

“I think you must have forgotten what he is like by this time.”

“No, I don’t.  One doesn’t forget a nightmare in a hurry.”

“Tita, really——­”

“There!  I’ll be good.  I’ll consign him to the lowest depths and never dig him up again.  And so he has left town?  What a blessed relief!  Now I can go out and enjoy myself. Let us go out, Meg!  Let us——­what’s that?"

She stands transfixed in the middle of the room, Margaret opposite her.  Both seem stricken into marble.

A knock at the door, loud, sharp, resounding—­a knock well known to both.

“And you said he was gone to the country,” says Tita, in a low whisper filled with deepest suspicions.

“He said so.  I believed it.  It must be a mistake,” says Margaret.  “He certainly said so.”

They have lost some moments over their fear and astonishment.  The sound of a rapidly approaching footstep, quite as well known to them as the knock, rouses both to a sense of desperation.

“What on earth shall I do?” says Tita, who is now as white as a sheet.

“Stay and see him,” says Margaret, with sudden inspiration.

“Stay!  Do you think I should stay for one moment in the room with him?  No!  I shall go in there,” pointing to the next room that opens out of this with folding-doors, “and wait until he goes away.”

She has hardly time to reach this seclusion when the door is thrown wide, and Sir Maurice is announced.

“Nobody with you?” says he, glancing somewhat expectantly around him.  “I fancied I heard someone. So glad to find you alone!”

“Yes—­yes—­perhaps it is better,” says Margaret vaguely, absently, thinking always of the little firebrand in that room beyond, but so near, so fatally near.

“Better?  You mean——­”

“Well, I mean that Tita has only just left the room,” says Margaret desperately.

“She—­is in there, then?” pointing towards the folding-doors.

“Yes. Do speak low.  You know she—­I can’t disguise from you, Maurice, that she——­”

Margaret hesitates.

“Hates me?  I’m quite aware of that.”  A long pause.  “She is well, I hope?” frigidly.

“I think so.  She looks well, lovely indeed—­a little pale, perhaps.  Maurice,” leaning across and whispering cautiously, “why don’t you try to make a reconciliation of some sort?  A beginning might lead to the happiest results, and I am sure you do care for her—­and—­do try and make up with her.”