“I must go!” he said.  “I must go round to Somervell Street at once.”

When he had gone, Diana picked up the newspaper from the floor where he had tossed it, and smoothing out its crumpled sheet, proceeded to read the short paragraph, surmounted by staring head-lines, which had sent her husband hurrying hot-foot to Adrienne’s house.

“MURDEROUS ATTACK ON MISS ADRIENNE DE GERVAIS.

“As Miss Adrienne de Gervais, the popular actress, was leaving the Premier Theatre after the matinee performance to-day, a man rushed out from a side street and fired three shots at her, wounding her severely.  Miss de Gervais was carried into the theatre, where a doctor who chanced to be passing rendered first aid.  Within a very few minutes the news of the outrage became known and the theatre was besieged by inquirers.  The would-be assassin, who made good his escape, was a man of unmistakably foreign appearance.”

Diana laid the paper down very quietly.  This, then, was the news which had power to bring that look of fear and dread to her husband’s face—­which could instantly wipe out from his mind all thoughts of his wife and of everything that concerned her.

Perhaps, she reflected scornfully, it was as well that the revelation had come when it did!  Otherwise—­otherwise, she had been almost on the verge of forgetting her just cause for jealousy, forgetting all the past months of misery, and believing in her husband once again.

The trill of the telephone from below checked her bitter thoughts, and hurrying downstairs into the hall, she lifted the receiver and held it to her ear.

“Yes.  Who is it?”

Possibly something was wrong with the wire, or perhaps it was only that Diana’s voice, particularly deep and low-pitched for a woman, misled the speaker at the other end.  Whatever it may have been, Adrienne’s voice, rather tremulous and shaky, came through the ’phone, and she was obviously under the impression that she was speaking to Diana’s husband.

“Oh, is that you, Max?  Don’t be frightened.  I’m not badly hurt.  I hear it’s already in the papers, and as I knew you’d be nearly mad with anxiety, I’ve made the doctor let me ’phone you myself.  Of course you can guess who did it.  It was not the man you caught waiting about outside the theatre.  It was the taller one of the two we saw at Charing Cross that day.  Please come round as soon as you can.”

Diana’s lips set in a straight line.  Very deliberately she replaced the receiver and rang off without reply.  A small, fine smile curved her lips as she reflected that, within a few minutes, Max’s arrival at Somervell Street would enlighten Miss de Gervais as to the fact that she had bean pouring out her reassuring remarks to the wrong person.

Half an hour later Diana came slowly downstairs, dressed for dinner.  Jerry was waiting for her in the hall.

“There’s a ’phone message just come through from Max,” he said, a trifle awkwardly. (Jerry had not lived through the past few months at Lilac Lodge without realising the terms on which the Erringtons stood with each other.) “He won’t be back till late.”