“A trap?” Joan repeated his accusation in a perplexity.  She turned and she saw the door, the door behind her, which Escobar had faced, the door into the hall, slowly open.  There had been no turning of the handle, it was unlatched before.  Yet Joan had seen to it that it was shut before ever she beckoned Mario Escobar into the room.  Some one, then, had been listening.  Mario Escobar had seen the handle move, the door drawn ajar.  Joan saw it open now to its full width, and in the entrance Stella Croyle.

CHAPTER XXVI

A FATAL KINDNESS

Joan picked up her cloak and arranged it upon her shoulders.  She did not give one thought to Stella, or even hear the words which Stella began nervously to speak.  Her secret appointment would come to light now in any case.  It would very likely cost her—­oh, all the gold and glamour of the world.  It would be bandied about in gossip over the tea-tables, in the street, at the Clubs, in the Press.  Sir Chichester ought to be happy, at all events.  The thought struck her with a wry humour, and brought a smile to her lips.  He would accomplish his dream.  Without effort, without a letter or a telephone call, or a rebuff, he would have such publicity as he could hardly have hoped for.  “Who is that?” Joan made up a little scene.  “That?  Oh, don’t you know?  That’s Sir Chichester Splay.  You must have heard of Sir Chichester!  Why, it was in his house that the Whitworth girl, rather pretty but an awful fool, carried on with the spy-man.”

Joan was a little overstrung.  All the while she was powdering her nose in front of a mirror and removing as best she could the traces of tears, and all the while Mrs. Croyle was stammering words and words and words behind her.  Joan regretted that Stella was not going to the Willoughbys’ ball.  If she had been, she would probably be carrying some rouge in her little hand-bag, and Joan might have borrowed some.

“Well, since you haven’t got any with you, I must go,” said Joan, bursting suddenly into Stella’s monologue.  But she had caught a name spoken just before Stella stopped in her perplexity at Joan’s outbreak.

“Harry Luttrell!” Joan repeated.  What in the world had Stella Croyle got to say to her about Harry Luttrell?  But Stella resumed her faltering discourse and the sense of her words penetrated at last to Joan’s brain and amazed her.

Joan was to leave Harry Luttrell alone.

“You are quite young,” said Stella, “only twenty.  What does he matter to you?  You have everything in front of you.  With your looks and your twenty years you can choose where you will.  You have lovers already——­”

“I?” Joan interrupted.

“Mario Escobar.”

Joan repeated the name with such a violence of scorn that for a moment Stella Croyle was silenced.

“Mario Escobar!”

“He was here with you a moment ago.”