‘No,’ she said quickly, without thinking.

‘Ah!’ he observed reflectively, ‘I knew I was right.’  He paused, and added, coldly, ‘If you aren’t better you ought to go to bed.’

Then he left her, shutting the door with a noise that showed a certain lack of sympathy with her headache.

She sprang up.  Her first feeling was one of thankfulness that that brief interview had occurred in darkness.  So Stephen was aware of the existence of the sovereign!  The sovereign was not occult.  Possibly he had put it there.  And what did he know he was ‘right’ about?

She lighted the gas, and gazed at herself in the glass, realizing that she no longer had a headache, and endeavouring to arrange her ideas.

‘What’s this?’ said another voice at the door.  She glanced round hastily, guiltily.  It was Charlie.

‘Steve telephoned me you were too ill to go to the dance,’ explained Charlie, ’so I thought I’d come and make inquiries.  I quite expected to find you in bed with a nurse and a doctor or two at least.  What is it?’ He smiled.

‘Nothing,’ she replied.  ‘Only a headache.  It’s gone now.’

She stood against the mantelpiece, so that he should not see the white parcel.

‘That’s good,’ said Charlie.

There was a pause.

’Strange, Li Hung Chang dying last night, just after we had been talking about killing mandarins,’ she said.  She could not keep off the subject.  It attracted her like a snake, and she approached it in spite of the fact that she fervently wished not to approach it.

‘Yes,’ said Charlie.  ’But Li wasn’t a mandarin, you know.  And he didn’t die after we had been talking about mandarins.  He died before.’

’Oh!  I thought it said in the paper he died at two o’clock this morning.’

‘Two a.m. in Pekin,’ Charlie answered.  ’You must remember that Pekin time is many hours earlier than our time.  It lies so far eastward.’

‘Oh!’ she said again.

Stephen hurried in, with a worried air.

‘Ah!  It’s you, Charlie!’

‘She isn’t absolutely dying, I find,’ said Charlie, turning to Vera:  ‘You are going to the dance after all—­aren’t you?’

‘I say, Vera,’ Stephen interrupted, ’either you or I must have a scene with Martha.  I’ve always suspected that confounded housemaid.  So I put a marked sovereign in a drawer this morning, and it was gone at lunch-time.  She’d better hook it instantly.  Of course I shan’t prosecute.’

‘Martha!’ cried Vera.  ’Stephen, what on earth are you thinking of?  I wish you would leave the servants to me.  If you think you can manage this house in your spare time from the works, you are welcome to try.  But don’t blame me for the consequences.’  Glances of triumph flashed in her eyes.

‘But I tell you—­’

‘Nonsense,’ said Vera.  ’I took the sovereign.  I saw it there and I took it, and just to punish you, I’ve spent it.  It’s not at all nice to lay traps for servants like that.’