Enid Crofton looked at Timmy, too, and if evil thoughts could kill, the child would have fallen dead.  But evil thoughts do not kill, and so all that happened was that Timmy had a sudden, instinctive feeling that he must account for his presence.

Looking up into his godfather’s face, he said breathlessly:—­“The front door was shut, so I came in, through the kitchen.  It’s ever so late, Godfrey—­after half past seven.  Dad will be upset if you’re not back to speak to him before dinner!”

* * * * *

As the two, the tall man and the short boy, walked away into the darkness, Radmore was possessed by an extraordinary mixture of feelings.  “You’ve had an escape!  You’ve got well out of what would have been not only a dangerous but an absurd situation,” so whispered a secret, inner voice.  And yet there was a side of him which felt not only balked and disappointed, but exasperated...

“Do you ever think of people’s faces when they’re not there?” asked Timmy suddenly, and then, without waiting for an answer, he went on:—­“When I shut my eyes, before I go quite off to sleep, you know, I see a row of faces.  Sometimes they’re people I’ve never seen at all; but last night I kept seeing Mrs. Crofton’s face, looking just as it looked when Flick ran in and growled at her the other night.  It was such an awful look—­I don’t think I shall ever forget it.”

As Radmore said nothing, the little boy asked another question:  “Do you think Mrs. Crofton pretty?” This time Timmy waited for an answer.

“Yes, I think she’s very pretty.  But gentlemen don’t discuss ladies and their looks, old boy.”

“Don’t they?  How stupid of them!” said Timmy.  He added a little shyly, “I suppose a gentleman may talk of his sister?”

Radmore turned hot in the darkness.  Was Timmy going to say something of Betty, and of that old, painful, now he hoped forgotten, episode?  But Timmy only observed musingly:—­“You haven’t seen Rosamund yet.  Of course we never say so to her, because it might make her vain, but I do think, Godfrey, that she’s very, very pretty.”

And then, rather to his companion’s discomfiture, his queer little mind swung back to the woman to whose house they had just been.  “Mrs. Crofton,” he observed, with an air of finality, “may be pretty, but she’s got what I call a blotting-paper face.”

CHAPTER X

Radmore felt secretly relieved that he and Timmy got home too late for him to see Mr. Tosswill alone before dinner.  And when at last he came down, just a minute or two late, for he had to do things for himself to which he had become unaccustomed—­unpacking his bag, putting out his evening clothes, placing of studs in his evening shirt, and so on—­he found what looked to him like a large party of strangers all gathered together in the dear old drawing-room.

As he walked in among them he looked first with quick interest at the three girls.  Yes, Timmy was right—­Rosamund was lovely.  Dolly struck him as commonplace, though as a matter of fact she looked more attractive than usual.  Betty looked very hot—­or was it that the exquisite complexion that once had been her chief physical beauty had gone?