“That if he ever had loved her—­and he seemed now to doubt that—­he loved her no longer.”

“Just shows how fickle he is,” says Tita, with supreme scorn.

“Of course, if you are determined to misjudge him in every way——­”

“It is he who misjudges me!” She gets up and walks impatiently from Margaret to the window and back again.  “How could he say I deliberately deserted him?”

Margaret looks at her.  It suddenly occurs to her what a blessed thought that was of hers to take him out of hearing to the far end of the room.

“You heard that, then?”

Tita starts and turns crimson.

“Oh, that!” stammers she.  “Well, I—­I couldn’t help it.  I was near the door, and he spoke very loudly, and——­”

“And you heard,” says Margaret, suppressing some amusement.  “Quite so.  Well, you did leave him, you see.”

“Not until he drove me to it by his cruelty, his wicked suspicions.  You know that, Margaret.”

“Oh!  I know he behaved like a stupid boy,” says Margaret impatiently.

“Ah, darling Meg!  I knew you would take my part.”

“And you,” mercilessly, “behaved like a silly baby.”

Tita flings herself into a chair with a petulant gesture.

“He has won you over to his side.  I knew, when he took you down to the end of the room, where I could hear nothing, that he was going to poison your mind against me.”

Miss Knollys gives way once more to ill-timed mirth.

“So you were looking, too?” says she.

“I—­no.  Oh no. I—­I only”—­growing crimson—­“wanted to see whether you were safe.  You had stopped talking, and I know how violent he can be, and,” with a gasp, “I just looked once to see that you were alive.”

“Tita,” says Miss Knollys solemnly, “when I want those dozen lies told for me in a minute, I shan’t ask you to tell them.”

CHAPTER XXII.

HOW MAURICE SMOKES A CIGAR, AND MUSES ON MANY THINGS; HOW HE LAMENTS HIS SOLITUDE; AND HOW AN UNEXPECTED VISITOR COMES TO HIM.

“It is the mynd that maketh good or ill,” says the old poet.  Sir Maurice, sitting here in the library at The Place, feels his “mynd” far from happy.  He has finished his business with the agent, and now there lies before him a long, dull evening in which to think on many things.

He is comfortable enough.  His mother is well away, somewhere in Essex, and so he has the house to himself.  The fire is burning very nicely—­these May evenings are often chilly—­and the cigar he is smoking is excellent.  The dinner has been excellent, too.  Astonishing, considering the shortness of the notice and what servants are.  And yet—­yet he feels dull to the last degree.

Over and over again his mind runs back to his morning’s interview with Margaret.  He would have stifled such returns, but they are beyond him.  His brain insists on making photographs of Margaret’s drawing-room, with its screens here and its pots there, and the tall jar filled with the sweet-scented flowers of early summer.  The photographs go farther than that, too.  One prominent object in all of them are the folding-doors at the end of the room.