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they weren’t staying with you just now. But I shan’t have to see much of them, shall I? I’d better go back to the hotel and get my things. I’ll be back in time to dress for dinner—still have it at the same old time!”

“We do, dear. Good-bye.”

Tony was dressed early, but when he came to the drawing-room he saw that one person was before him, a girl in a dark dress who was seated on the sofa with her head turned away from the door. The companion, evidently. He walked in, and at his step she looked round.

It was Pamela.

For a second he was too much surprised to speak, and in that second he took in the fact that she was somehow altered. Could it be the dress? He had never seen her in anything but white. No, that wasn’t all. . . . He heard himself saying, “What—on—earth—are—you doing here?”

It occurred to neither of them that his words had an unflattering sound. Pamela found her voice too. It was half strangled and very weary.

“You ought to know that,” she said.

Her surprise at the sight of him was blurred, partly because she was very tired after a day of “sight-seeing,” dear to the heart of Miss Sidmouth, and partly because his appearance instantly awakened old memories which she preferred to keep asleep. Besides, such strange things had happened to her lately, one or two more hardly affected her. But he surely need not have been so very surprised to see her. Did he imagine she was still at Trent Stoke, after—after. . . .

“What on earth are you doing here?” He always was tactless, but he might think a little before he spoke now, surely. She looked at him a little resentfully, afraid