She laughed.

“You needn’t be afraid of that.  I shall turn up again like the proverbial bad penny.”

“All the same, make it a promise,” he urged.

“I promise, then, you distrustful man!  But about Molly?”

“I don’t think you need worry about her.”  Selwyn laughed a little.  “The sudden accession to wealth is accounted for.  It seems that she has sold a picture.”

“Oh!  So that’s the explanation, is it?” Sara felt unaccountably relieved.

“Yes—­though goodness knows how she has beguiled any one into buying one of her daubs!”

“Oh, they’re quite good, really, Doctor Dick.  It’s only that Futurist Art doesn’t appeal to you.”

“Not exactly!  She showed me one of her paintings the other day.  It looked like a bad motor-bus accident in a crowded street, and she told me that it represented the physical atmosphere of a woman who had just been jilted.”

Sara laughed suddenly and hysterically.

“How—­how awfully funny!” she said in an odd, choked voice.  Then, fearful of losing her self-command, she added hastily:  “I’ll write and tell Elisabeth that I’ll come, then.”  And fled out of the room.

CHAPTER XIV

ELISABETH INTERVENES

As Sara stepped out of the train at Paddington, the first person upon whom her eyes alighted was Tim Durward.  He hastened up to her.

“Tim!” she exclaimed delightedly.  “How dear of you to come and meet me!”

“Didn’t you expect I should?” He was holding her hand and joyfully pump-handling it up and down as though he would never let it go, while the glad light in his eyes would indubitably have betrayed him to any passer-by who had chanced to glance in his direction.

Sara coloured faintly and withdrew her hands from his eager clasp.

“Oh, well, you might conceivably have had something else to do,” she returned evasively.

For an instant the blue eyes clouded.

“I never had anything to do,” he said shortly.  “You know that.”

She laughed up at him.

“Now, Tim, I won’t be growled at the first minute of my arrival.  You can pour out your grumbles another day.  First now, I want to hear all the news.  Remember, I’ve been vegetating in the country since the beginning of March!”

She drew him tactfully away from the old sore subject of his enforced idleness, and, while the car bore them swiftly towards the Durwards’ house on Green Street, she entertained him with a description of the Selwyn trio.

“I should think your ‘Doctor Dick’ considers himself damned lucky in having got you there—­seeing that his house seems all at sixes and sevens,” commented Tim rather glumly.

“He does.  Oh!  I’m quite appreciated, I assure you.”

Tim made no reply, but stared out of the window.  The car rounded the corner into Park Lane; in another moment they would reach their destination.  Suddenly he turned to her, his face rather strained-looking.