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serted in favour of the spare bedroom whose single bed required less attention.

Here again was a reminder of Grace’s handiwork. The bed was freshly made; the breeze blew cleanly through the room as it had not done since Grace left, for the very good reason that he had not bothered to open the windows. The order upon the dressing table—his erstwhile vanished studs standing in a neat row before his pot of hair-dressing; his brushes and the various odds and ends in their rightful places—evidence that Pat had keenly observed their disposition in other days—distressed him.

His slippers placed neatly beside the easy chair in the corner; his dressing-gown depending from the hook behind the door; the tidiness of the books on the small bedside table, assisted his recurring doubt.

Had not Patricia been guilty of something in the nature of mild sacrilege in thus assuming the offices of a housewife unasked—the offices of Grace? Would not delicacy have dictated another arrangement of these intimate things, at least? Would it not have been better if the things on the dressing-table, for instance, were otherwise arranged, and his slippers somewhere else?

Then his gaze rested upon the bed, and his scruples were forgotten.

From beneath the pillow near the wall a narrow, pale-blue ribbon trailed across the tangerine silk of the bed-spread!

Harley stared at it incredulously for a moment, then he leaned over the bed and rolled the pillow aside.

He stood perfectly still. The blood mounted in his cheeks slowly.

“Pat, you’re a great girl!” he exclaimed softly, at last, as he lifted the delicate sheer-silk pyjamas— the dainty night-attire of the modern fashionable young lady. “A great girl!”

He replaced the pyjamas beneath the pillow reverently. No thought of the shameless defiance