“What is that?” faltered Bridget.

“Her utter incapability of the remotest shadow of deception.  At least I know that when the time comes to put my fate to the touch, she will answer with absolute honesty.  If she loves me I shall be the most fortunate beggar under the sun, and if unhappily she doesn’t, she will say so sans phrase.”

“You put a premium on candour!” she suggested.

“Why, yes,” he answered.  “Whatever I may be I am not very intolerant, but double dealing is the one thing I think I might find it impossible to forgive.  It isn’t the spoken lie that’s the worst.”

“What is?” asked Bridget.

“The abominable whitewash we daub over our lives.  The eternal pretence to be something we are not.  The——­ But,” Jimmy broke off, with a laugh, “you must always pull me up when I show signs of beginning to preach!”

As he was speaking, the door opened and Miller in his quiet way announced—­

“Colonel Faversham.”

“Hullo, Jimmy, are you here!” he exclaimed, as Bridget offered her hand.

“Don’t you think it looks rather like it?” answered Jimmy, with an ingratiating smile.  “I hope your knee is better, colonel.”

“Quite all right,” said Colonel Faversham, with a scowl.  “Never anything the matter with it.  I am never ill.  There isn’t a sounder man in London.”

“Oh well, that’s a large order,” answered Jimmy.  “Still, at your age I don’t suppose there is.”

Colonel Faversham looked as if he would like to annihilate Jimmy, who was struggling to put David Rosser’s novel into his jacket pocket.  Then he said “good-bye” to Bridget, adding coolly—­

“I shall bring back the book in a day or two.”

With a nod to the colonel he left the room, whereupon Faversham lowered himself carefully into a chair.

“Has Jimmy often been here?” he demanded.

“Oh dear, no,” she answered.  “This is the first visit.”

“Like his impudence!  It won’t be the last.”

“I hope not,” murmured Bridget, standing by the side of his chair.

“How many times have you met him since that afternoon at my house?” asked Colonel Faversham.

“Only once besides to-day!”

“He took that book,” was the answer, “simply for the sake of bringing it back!  I hate anything underhanded.”

“But he isn’t!” Bridget insisted.  “He said that was his reason.”

“Barefaced!” shouted the colonel.  “The fact is Jimmy Clynesworth has never been the same since his sunstroke.  Bridget,” he added, “I should like to keep you entirely to myself.  I should like——­”

What his precise desire might be Bridget was not destined on the present occasion to hear.  He suddenly stopped in the middle of his sentence, gazing at her with horror and alarm in his face.  Covering hers, she had incontinently broken down, and her body shook with the violence of her sobs.  Colonel Faversham found his feet so hastily that he could not suppress an exclamation as he stooped to rub his knee.  He knew neither what to say nor how to act.