“There, that’s all,” she said, rising suddenly.  “It’s no claim at all, of course.  I know that very well.  Harry left me at Stockholm four years ago;” and suddenly Joan’s face flushed scarlet.  She had been absorbed in Stella’s sorrows, she had admired that kind action of Harry Luttrell’s which had brought so much trouble in its train.  It needed that reminder that Harry had only left Stella Croyle at Stockholm to bring home the whole part which Harry had taken in the affair.  Now she understood; a flame of sudden jealousy confused her; and with it came a young girl’s distaste as though some ugly reptile had raised its head amongst flowers.

“I never saw Harry again until this week, except for a minute outside a shop one morning in Piccadilly.  But he hasn’t married during those four years, so I always kept a hope that we should be somewhere together again for a few days, and that afterwards he would come back to me.”

“That’s why you chose this week to come to Rackham Park?”

“Yes,” answered Stella Croyle; and she laughed harshly.  “But I hadn’t considered you.”

Joan looked helplessly at her companion.  Stella had not one small chance of the fulfilment of her hope—­no, not one—­even if she herself stood a million miles away.  Of that Joan was sure.  But how was she to say so to one who was blind and deaf to all but her hope, who would not listen, who would not see?  Mario Escobar had left his gloves behind him on a couch.  Joan saw them, and remembered to whom they belonged, and her thoughts took another complexion.  Harry Luttrell!  What share had she now in his life?  She rose abruptly and pushed back her chair.

“Oh, I’ll stand aside,” she said, “never fear!  We are to talk things over to-night.  I shall say ‘No.’”

She had turned again to the window, but a startled question from Stella Croyle stayed her feet.

“Harry has asked you to marry him?”

“He was going to,” Joan faltered.  The sense of her own loss returned upon her, she felt utterly alone, all the more alone because of the wondrous week which had come to so desolate an end to-night.  “Here in this little room, not two hours ago.  But I asked him to wait until supper time to-night.  Here—­it was here we stood!”

Joan looked down.  Yes, she had been standing in this very spot, the table here upon her left, that chair upon her right, that trifolium in the pattern of the carpet under her feet, when Harry Luttrell had taken her in his arms.  What foolish thing was Stella Croyle saying now?

“I take back all that I have said to you.  If Harry has spoken to you already I have lost—­that’s all.  I didn’t know,” she said.  Her cheeks were white, her eyes suddenly grown large with a horror in them which Joan could not understand.

“Yes, it’s all over.  I have lost,” she kept repeating in a dreadful whisper, moistening her dry lips with her tongue between her sentences.