Traill strode into the drawing-room as unconscious of the fate that Mrs. Durlacher had so deftly woven for him as is the unwieldy gull that, tumbling down the wind, strikes into the meshes of the fowler’s net and finds itself enchained within the web.  Coralie, herself, set to the task of winning him, was as unconscious of the subtly diaphonous mechanism of the trap as he.  Yet she was versed well enough in human nature in her way.  Innocence could not be laid at her door with the hope of finding it again.  But it needs the long training of social strategy for any one to realize the cunning knowledge that things are not obtained in this world by asking for them, but by the hidden method of suggestion.  That Mrs. Durlacher was in search of a suitable sister-in-law was obvious to the most untrained eye.  It was no capable deduction on Coralie’s part to have made certain of that.  But she hesitated when she came to the wondering of whether she was considered suitable to fill that position herself.  The hesitancy was of but little duration.  The first time she had seen Traill, he had attracted her; now the attraction was increased a thousandfold.  She had often stayed at Apsley Manor.  Once her father had gone down for the shooting and had returned glowing with enthusiasm.

“Place I should like to have,” he had grunted, “place I should like to have.”  And after dinner he sat over his port and amused himself with breaking the tenth commandment.

But there was no certainty in Coralie’s mind that Mrs. Durlacher, with all her outward show of friendship, would consider her to be the eligible one.  Yet here the chance offered.  She determined to take it—­hand open, ready for the gift.

From the moment then, that he arrived, she began the outset of her campaign.  The social manner she knew he hated.  That she cast off.  The astute woman of the world, he despised.  Mrs. Durlacher had well grounded her.  She wrapped herself in the simplicity of a girl whose eyes have scarcely opened to a knowledge of life and whose inner consciousness is as yet untouched.

If she had given him any impression of a want of innocence the day before when they discussed the case in the divorce court which he had won, she now swept it from his mind.  He found her ingenuousness charming.  Her eyes helped her.  They were big, grey, wide-open like a child’s.  He found himself looking interestedly for the simple questions that they turned upon him.  In the box at the theatre, they leant back in their seats and talked in undertones through the acts and Mrs. Durlacher, leaning out to watch the piece, heard not a word that the actors said.  Her ears were strained to catch the progress of their conversation.  During the intervals, she levelled her glasses at the house and was apparently too pre-occupied to interrupt their enjoyment.  In the interval that followed the second act, her glasses, roaming aimlessly across the stalls, became riveted to her eyes.  After a moment, she looked hastily away, then stealthily looked again.  Finally she turned round to her brother, curbing the surprise which, notwithstanding her efforts, forced itself into the expression of her face.