Tavernake laughed.

“Careful!” he repeated.  “She isn’t likely to be even civil to me tomorrow when I tell her that I have seen you and I refuse to give her your address.  Careful, indeed!  What has a poor clerk in a house-agent’s office to fear from such a personage?”

The servant had reappeared with their second and last course.  For a few moments they spoke of casual subjects.  Afterwards, however, Tavernake asked a question.

“By the way,” he said, “we are hoping to let Grantham House to Mrs. Wenham Gardner.  I suppose she must be very wealthy?”

Beatrice looked at him curiously.

“Why do you come to me for information?” she demanded.  “I suppose that she brought you references?”

“We haven’t quite got to that stage yet,” he answered.  “Somehow or other, from her manner of talking and general appearance, I do not think that either Mr. Dowling or I doubted her financial position.”

“I should never have thought you so credulous a person,” remarked Beatrice, with a smile.

Tavernake was genuinely disturbed.  His business instincts were aroused.

“Do you really mean that this Mrs. Wenham Gardner is not a person of substance?” he inquired.

Beatrice shrugged her shoulders.

“She is the wife of a man who had the reputation of being very wealthy,” she replied.  “She has no money of her own, I am sure.”

“She still lives with her husband, I suppose?” Tavernake asked.

Beatrice closed her eyes.

“I know very little about her,” she declared.  “Last time I heard, he had disappeared, gone away, or something of the sort.”

“And she has no money,” Tavernake persisted, “except what she gets from him?  No settlement, even, or anything of that sort?”

“Nothing at all,” Beatrice answered.

“This is very bad news,” Tavernake remarked, thinking gloomily of his wasted day.  “It will be a great disappointment to Mr. Dowling.  Why, her motor-car was magnificent, and she talked as though money were no object at all.  I suppose you are quite sure of what you are saying?”

Beatrice shrugged her shoulders.

“I ought to know,” she answered, grimly, “for she is my sister.”

Tavernake remained quite motionless for a minute, without speech; it was his way of showing surprise.  When he was sure that he had grasped the import of her words, he spoke again.

“Your sister!” he repeated.  “There is a likeness, of course.  You are dark and she is fair, but there is a likeness.  That would account,” he continued, “for her anxiety to find you.”

“It also accounts,” Beatrice replied, with a little break of the lips, “for my anxiety that she should not find me.  Leonard,” she added, touching his hand for a moment with hers, “I wish that I could tell you everything, but there are things behind, things so terrible, that even to you, my dear brother, I could not speak of them.”