Her spirits rose with a bound.  She had a week, a whole week, in the company of Harry Luttrell; and what might she not do in a week if she used her wits and used her beauty!  Stella Croyle ran down the stairs like a girl.

Jenny Prask shut the door, and, opening a wardrobe, took from a high shelf Mrs. Croyle’s dressing-bag.  She opened it, and from one of the fittings she lifted out a bottle.  The bottle was quite full of a white, colourless liquid.  Jenny Prask nodded to herself and carefully put the bottle back.  There was very little she did not know about the proceedings of her mistress.  Then she went out of the room into the gallery, and peeped down to watch the other guests assemble.  She saw Miranda Brown, Stella, Sir Chichester Splay, Dennis and Harry Luttrell come from their different rooms and gather in the hall below.  From a passage behind her, a girl, butterfly-bright, flashed out and danced joyously down the stairs.  A new-comer, thought Jenny, with a pang of alarm for her mistress!  But she heard the new-comer speak, and heard her spoken to.  It was Joan Whitworth.

“Oh!” Jenny Prask gasped.

Undoubtedly Joan “hooked behind” to-night.  What had come over her?  Jenny asked.  Her quick mind realised that Mario Escobar was not answerable for the change since Mario Escobar was miles away at Midhurst.  Besides, according to Mr. Harper, this flirtation with Escobar had been going on a year and more.

Jenny Prask looked from Joan to Harry Luttrell.  She saw them drawn to one another across the hall and move into the dining-room side by side.  She turned back with a little moan of disappointment into Stella Croyle’s bedroom; and whilst she tidied it, more than once she stopped to wring her hands.

Stella Croyle, however, kept her good spirits through the evening.  For after dinner Harry Luttrell, of his own will, came straight to her in the drawing-room.

“Oh, Wub,” she said in a whisper as she drew her skirt aside to make room for him upon the couch.  “Oh, Wub, what years it is since I have seen you.”

When the old nickname fell upon Harry’s ears, he looked quickly about him to see where Joan Whitworth sat.  But she was at the other end of the room.

“Yes, it is a long time.”

“Stockholm!” said Stella, dwelling upon the name.  She lowered her voice.  “Wub, I suffered terribly after you went away.  Oh, it wasn’t a good time.  No, it wasn’t!”

“Stella, I am very sorry,” he said gently.  He knew himself this day the glories and the pangs of love.  He was sunk ocean-deep one moment in the sense of his unworthiness, the next he knocked his head against the stars on the soaring billow of his pride.  He could not but feel for Stella, who had passed through the same furnace.  He could not but grieve that the wondrous book of which he was racing through the first pages had been closed for her by him.  Might she not open it again, some time, with another at her side?