“Yes, sir.”

Costin helped Sangster on with his coat and saw him to the door; he was dying to ask what had become of Mrs. Jimmy, but he did not like to.  He was sure that Jimmy had merely got married out of pique, and that he had repented as quickly as one generally does repent in such cases.

Sangster walked back to his rooms; he felt very depressed.  He was fond of Jimmy though he did not approve of him; he racked his brains to know what to do for the best.

When he got home he sat down at his desk and stared at the pen and ink for some moments undecidedly; then he began to write.

He addressed an envelope to Christine down at Upton House, and stared at it till it was dry.  After all, she might resent his interference, and yet, on the other hand, if Jimmy were going to be seriously ill, she would blame him for not having told her.

Finally he took a penny from his waistcoat pocket and tossed up for it.

“Heads I write, tails I leave it alone.”

He tossed badly and the penny came down in the waste-paper basket, but it came down heads, and with a little lugubrious grimace, Sangster dipped the pen in the ink again and squared his elbows.

He wrote the letter four times before it suited him, and even then it seemed a pretty poor epistle to his critical eye as he read it through—­

“Dear Mrs. Challoner,—­I am just writing to let you know that Jimmy is ill; nothing very serious, but I thought that perhaps you would like to know.  If you could spare the time to come and see him, I am sure he would very much appreciate it.  He seems very down on his luck.  I don’t want to worry or alarm you, and am keeping an eye on him myself, but thought it only right that you should know.—­Your sincere friend,

“Ralph Sangster.”

It seemed a clumsy enough way of explaining things, he thought discontentedly, and yet it was the best he could do.  He folded the paper and put it into the envelope; he sat for a moment with it in his hand looking down at Christine’s married name, “Mrs. James Challoner.”

Poor little Mrs. Jimmy!  A wife, and yet no wife.  Sangster lifted the envelope to his lips, and hurriedly kissed the name before he thrust the envelope into his pocket, and went out to post it.

Would she come, he wondered? he asked himself the question anxiously before he dropped the letter into the box.  Somehow deep down in his heart he did not think that she would.

CHAPTER XVIII

KETTERING HEARS SOMETHING

“I shall never be able to manage it if I live to be a hundred,” said Christine despairingly.

She leaned back in the padded seat of Kettering’s big car and looked up into his face with laughing eyes.

She had been trying to drive; she had driven the car at snail’s pace the length of the drive leading from Upton House, and tried to turn out of the open carriage gate into the road.