Fraide smiled at her affectionately; then looked at Loder.  “Chilcote has got anew lease of nerves, Eve,” he said, quietly.  “And I—­believe—­I have got a new henchman.  But I see my wife beckoning to me.  I must have a word with her before she flits away.  May I be excused?” He made a courteous gesture of apology; then smiled at Eve.

She looked after him as he moved away.  “I sometimes wonder what I should do if anything were to happen to the Fraides,” she said, a little wistfully.  Then almost at once she laughed, as if regretting her impulsiveness.  “You heard what he said,” she went on, in a different voice.  “Am I really to congratulate you?”

The change of tone stung Loder unaccountably.  “Will you always disbelieve in me?” he asked.

Without answering, she walked slowly across the deserted Terrace and, pausing by the parapet, laid her hand on the stonework.  Still in silence she looked out across the river.

Loder had followed closely.  Again her aloofness seemed a challenge.  “Will you always disbelieve in me?” he repeated.

At last she looked up at him, slowly.

“Have you ever given me cause to believe!” she asked, in a quiet voice.

To this truth he found no answer, though the subdued incredulity nettled him afresh.

Prompted to a further effort, he spoke again.  “Patience is necessary with every person and every circumstance,” he said.  “We’ve all got to wait and see.”

She did not lower her gaze as he spoke; and there seemed to him something disconcerting in the clear, candid blue of her eyes.  With a sudden dread of her next words, he moved forward and laid his hand beside hers on the parapet.

“Patience is needed for every one,” he repeated, quickly.  “Sometimes a man is like a bit of wreckage; he drifts till some force stronger than himself gets in his way and stops him.”  He looked again at her face.  He scarcely knew what he was saying; he only felt that he was a man in an egregiously false position, trying stupidly to justify himself.  “Don’t you believe that flotsam can sometimes be washed ashore?” he asked.

High above them Big Ben chimed the hour.

Eve raised her head.  It almost seemed to him that he could see her answer trembling on her lips; then the voice of Lady Sarah Fraide came cheerfully from behind them.

“Eve!” she called.  “Eve!  We must fly.  It’s absolutely three o’clock!”

X

In the days that followed Fraide’s marked adoption of him Loder behaved with a discretion that spoke well for his qualities.  Many a man placed in the same responsible, and yet strangely irresponsible, position might have been excused if, for the time at least, he gave himself a loose rein.  But Loder kept free of the temptation.