“It’s true,” she admitted meekly.  “I know very little.”

Joan looked very lovely as she stood nervously drumming with her gloved fingers on a little table which stood between them, all her assurance gone.

Mario Escobar lived always on the whirling edge of passion.  The least extra leap of the water caught him and drew him in.  He gazed at Joan, and the computing look which cast up her charms made her suddenly hot from head to foot.  The good-looking, pretentious fool whom it had been amusing to exhibit amidst the black frowns of her circle had suddenly become exquisitely desirable for herself as a prize, with her beauty, her dainty care to tend it, and her delicious clothes.  She would now be a real credit!  Escobar took a step towards her.

“After all,” he said, “we were such good friends.  We had little private interests which we did not share with other people.  Surely it was natural that I should wish to see you again.”

Mario was speaking smoothly enough now.  His voice, his eyes actually caressed her.  She was at pains to repress a shiver of physical repulsion.  But she remembered his letter very clearly.  It had expressed no mere wish to see her.  It had claimed a right with a vague threat of making trouble if the right were not conceded.  She had recognised the right, not out of the fear of the threat so much—­although that weighed with her, as out of a longing to have done with him for good and all.  Instinct had told her that this was the last type of man to find favour in Harry Luttrell’s eyes, that she herself would be lowered from her high pedestal in his heart, if he knew of the false friendship.

“Well, I agreed to see you,” she replied.  “But I have to go back to the ball.  Will you please to be quick?”

“The time and the place were of your own choice.”

“My choice!” Joan answered.  “I had no choice.  A girl amongst visitors in a country house—­when is she free?  When is she alone?  She can keep to her room—­yes!  But that’s all her liberty.  Let her go out, there will be some one at her side.”

“If she is like you—­no doubt,” said Escobar, and again he smiled at her covetously.  Joan shook the compliment off her with a hitch of her shoulders.

“We could have met in a hundred places,” Mario continued.

“I could have come to call on you as we arranged.”

“No!” cried Joan with more vigour than wisdom in her voice.  She had a picture of him, of the embarrassment of the Splays and her friends, of the disapproval of Harry Luttrell.

Escobar was quick when he dealt with women, quick and sensitive.  The passionate denial did not escape him.  He began to divine the true cause of this swift upheaval and revolution in her.

“You could have sent me a card for the Willoughbys’ dance.  It would have been easy enough for us to meet there.”

Again she replied, “No!” A note of obstinacy was audible.