Alma was gazing at him in surprise, mingled with apprehension.

’Please say what you mean.  I don’t see how you can possibly do me any service.  I have given up all thought of a professional career.

’I know you have.  I’m sorry for it, but it isn’t that I want to talk about.  You don’t see Mrs. Carnaby, but I suppose you hear of her now and then?’

‘Very rarely.’

‘You know that she has been taken up by Lady Isobel Barker?’

‘Who is Lady Isobel Barker?’

’Why, she’s a daughter of the Earl of Bournemouth, and she married a fellow on the Stock Exchange.  There are all sorts of amusing stories about her.  I don’t mean anything shady —­ just the opposite.  She did a good deal of slumming at the time when it was fashionable, and started a home for women of a certain kind —­ all that sort of thing.  Barker is by way of being a millionaire, and they live in great style; have Royalties down at Boscombe, and so on.  Well, Mrs. Carnaby has got hold of her.  I don’t know how she managed it.  Just after that affair it looked as if she would have a bad time.  People cut her —­ you know all about that?’

‘No, I don’t.  You mean that they thought ——­’

‘Just so; they did think.’  He nodded and smiled.  ’She was all the talk at the clubs, and, no doubt, in the boudoirs.  I wasn’t a friend of hers, you know —­ I met her now and then, that was all; so I didn’t quite know what to think.  But it looked —­ didn’t it?’

Alma avoided his glance, and said nothing.

‘I shouldn’t wonder,’ pursued Dymes, ’if she went to Lady Isobel and talked about her hard case, and just asked for help.  At all events, last May we began to hear of Mrs. Carnaby again.  Women who wanted to be thought smart had quite altered their tone about her.  Men laughed, but some of them began to admit that the case was doubtful.  At all events, Lady Isobel was on her side, and that meant a good deal.’

‘And she went about in society just as if nothing had happened?’

’No, no.  That would have been bad taste, considering where her husband was.  She wasn’t seen much, only talked about.  She’s a clever woman, and by the time Carnaby’s let loose she’ll have played the game so well that things will be made pretty soft for him.  I’m told he’s a bit of a globe-trotter, sportsman, and so on.  All he has to do is to knock up a book of travels, and it’ll go like wildfire.’

Alma had pulled to pieces a tassel on her chair.

‘What has all this to do with me?’ she asked abruptly.

’I’m coming to that.  You don’t know anything about Mrs. Strangeways either?  Well, there may be a doubt about Mrs. Carnaby, but there’s none about Mrs. S. She’s just about as bad as they make ’em.  I could tell you things —­ but I won’t.  What I want to know is, did you quarrel with her?’

‘Quarrel!  Why should we have quarrelled?  What had I to do with her?’