“Suggest?” he repeated, blankly.

“Yes.  I’d rather have your idea of the affair than anybody else’s.  You are so dear and sarcastic and keen that you can’t help getting straight at the middle of a fact.”

When Lillian wanted anything she could be very sweet.  She suddenly dropped her half-petulant tone; she suddenly ceased to be a spoiled child.  With a perfectly graceful movement she drew quite close to Loder and slid gently to her knees.

This is an attitude that few women can safely assume; it requires all the attributes of youth, suppleness, and a certain buoyant ease.  But Lillian never acted without justification, and as she leaned towards Loder her face lifted, her slight figure and pale hair softened by the firelight, she made a picture that it would have been difficult to criticise.

But the person who should have appreciated it stared steadily beyond it to the fire.  His mind was absorbed by one question —­the question of how he might reasonably leave the house before discovery became assured.

Lillian, attentively watchful of him, saw the uneasy look, and her own face fell.  But, as she looked, an inspiration came to her—­a remembrance of many interviews with Chilcote smoothed and facilitated by the timely use of tobacco.

“Jack,” she said, softly, “before you say another word I insist on your lighting a cigarette.”  She leaned forward. resting against his knee.

At her words Loder’s eyes left the fire.  His attention was suddenly needed for a new and more imminent difficulty.  “Thanks!” he said, quickly.  “I have no wish to smoke.”

“It isn’t a matter of what you wish but of what I say.”  She smiled.  She knew that Chilcote with a cigarette between his lips was infinitely more tractable than Chilcote sitting idle, and she had no intention of ignoring the knowledge.

But Loder caught at her words.  “Before you ordered me to smoke,” he said, “you told me to give you some advice.  Your first command must have prior claim.”  He grasped unhesitatingly at the less risky theme.

She looked up at him.  “You’re always nicer when you smoke,” she persisted, caressingly.  “Light a cigarette—­and give me one.”

Loder’s mouth became set.  “No,” he said, “we’ll stick to this advice business.  It interests me.”

“Yes—­afterwards.”

“No, now.  You want to find out why this Englishman from Italy was at your sister’s party, and why he disappeared?”

There are times when a malignant obstinacy seems to affect certain people.  The only answer Lillian made was to pass her hand over Loder’s waistcoat, and, feeling his cigarette-case, to draw it from the pocket.

He affected not to see it.  “Do you think he recognized you in that tent?” he insisted, desperately.

She held out the case.  “Here are your cigarettes.  You know we’re always more social when we smoke.”