“I have an engagement in a few minutes,” he explained.  “My car is waiting now.  I looked in at the club to dine, found my favourite table taken and nearly every man I ever disliked sidling up to tell me that he hears I am giving a wonderful party on Thursday.  I decided not to dine there, after all, and Charles found me a corner here.  I am going in five minutes.”

“Where to?” she asked.  “Can’t I come with you?”

“I fear not,” he answered.  “I am going down in the East End.”

“Adventuring?”

“More or less,” he admitted.

Lady Cynthia became beautiful.  She was always beautiful when she was not tired.

“Take me with you, please,” she begged.

He shook his head.

“Not to be done!”

“Don’t shake your head like that,” she enjoined, with a little grimace.  “People will think I am trying to borrow money from you and that you are refusing me!  Just take me with you some of the way.  I shall scream if I go back into that dancing-room again.”

Sir Timothy glanced at the clock.

“If there is any amusement to you in a rather dull drive eastwards—­”

She was on her feet with the soft, graceful speed which had made her so much admired before her present listlessness had set in.

“I’ll get my cloak,” she said.

They drove along the Embankment, citywards.  The heat of the city seemed to rise from the pavements.  The wall of the Embankment was lined with people, leaning over to catch the languid breeze that crept up with the tide.  They crossed the river and threaded their way through a nightmare of squalid streets, where half-dressed men and women hung from the top windows and were even to be seen upon the roof, struggling for air.  The car at last pulled up at the corner of a long street.

“I am going down here,” Sir Timothy announced.  “I shall be gone perhaps an hour.  The neighbourhood is not a fit one for you to be left alone in.  I shall have time to send you home.  The car will be back here for me by the time I require it.”

“Where are you going?” she asked curiously.  “Why can’t I come with you?”

“I am going where I cannot take you,” was the firm reply.  “I told you that before I started.”

“I shall sit here and wait for you,” she decided.  “I rather like the neighbourhood.  There is a gentleman in shirt-sleeves, leaning over the rail of the roof there, who has his eye on me.  I believe I shall be a success here—­which is more than I can say of a little further westwards.”

Sir Timothy smiled slightly.  He had exchanged his hat for a tweed cap, and had put on a long dustcoat.

“There is no gauge by which you may know the measure of your success,” he said.  “If there were—­”

“If there were?” she asked, leaning a little forward and looking at him with a touch of the old brilliancy in her eyes.