"Thank Heaven she's gone, and it's ten minutes past!" fervently sighed Mrs. Sorel, as the door closed behind a guest she had kissed warmly on both cheeks. "Céline, 'phone down and tell them not to send anyone else up, no matter who. We needn't be 'at home' a second after six."

She and Marise and Severance now had the sitting-room to themselves. The girl, who had been too busy feeding others to eat anything herself, selected a macaroon from a half-empty dish and nibbled it prettily. Severance regarded the charming creature with clouded eyes, wondering how much appetite their talk would leave her.

"How dear of you to stay and see us through!" cooed Mary, as if she had not known Severance's impatience equal to her own. She did this to lead up to her own tactful exit; and the mere male swallowed her bait without suspicion.

"See you through?" he echoed. "Why, I've been hanging on by my eyelids, waiting for my chance with you and Marise."

"Unless it's something you need me for," the chaperon said sweetly, "perhaps I might leave you to Marise's tender mercies. I'm a little tired——"

"I do need you," Severance assured her. "I don't dare to say what I've got to say to Marise alone. If I did, she might misunderstand. I can't risk that. Mrs. Sorel, this talk means everything to me. You're my friend. Promise you won't misunderstand."

Mary Sorel retained a fixed, kind smile; but she had a sickly sensation under her Empire waistband, as if something inside had melted and then cooled. She glanced at Marise, to judge if the girl had been in any way prepared for this queer outbreak. No, evidently not! The blue eyes looked large and suddenly scared. Marise stopped eating the macaroon, and, going slowly to the table, she laid the nibbled remnant on somebody else's plate.

"Why, of course I'll stop," Mary said. "I'm not so tired as to desert you when you flatter me like that."

"I'm not flattering, I'm depending on you." Never before, in her acquaintance with him, had the voice of Severance betrayed such agitation. Mary braced herself against a blow; but the melting thing inside began to congeal like cold candle-grease. Her knees felt like water. Still smiling, she sank rather than sat on a sofa, and held up her hand to Marise.

"If Lord Severance has a confession to make, we'd better sit together in judgment," she proposed. "We'll be kind judges, and this shall be our throne."

"Call it an appeal—a prayer—not a confession," Severance said. "If I'd ever prayed to God as I'm going to pray to you both, maybe I'd not be in the fix I'm in now."

"One would think you were afraid of us!" quavered Marise.

"I am," he admitted. "I was never in such a blue funk in my life. My legs are like poached eggs without toast."

The girl laughed nervously. "You'd better sit down," she advised.

"I couldn't to save my life. Might as well ask a chap on the rack to sing 'Araby.'"

"You're really frightening us!" Mary's tone was shrill. "Have Bolsheviks blown up your family castles? Have you lost all your money? Aren't you the true heir to the title?"

"I'm the heir right enough," Severance took her seriously. "And I haven't got any money—worth calling money. There's the rub! Marise, you know I love you?"

The girl caught her breath. "Why—sometimes I've thought so."

"You've known it, as well as you know you're alive. If I hadn't come into the beastly title I'd have asked you to marry me long ago. It was your own fault I didn't ask you, before my Cousin Eric died—the first one of the lot to go. You used to snub me every time I tried to speak of marrying. You didn't want to make up your mind!"

"No, honestly, I didn't," she confessed. "I liked you a whole lot, Tony, but—I wasn't quite sure—of either of us, you see, and——"

"You might have been sure of me! I couldn't look at any woman except you."

"It wasn't that sort of thing—exactly. People—cats!—used to put such horrid ideas into my head."

"What ideas?"

"I simply can't tell you, Tony. Don't ask me, please."

"Oh, well!" he flung out. "It doesn't matter much now what ideas you had then. Do you love me to-day, Marise?"

"I—think I do—a little," she almost whispered, as her parent's arm (twined round her waist) pressed painfully against her side.

"A little isn't enough!" Severance said. "It must be a big love to stand the strain."

"The strain of what?" Mary, as a mother, intervened.

"Of the sacrifice I'm going to ask—to beg, to implore—her to make."

"Sacrifice? Do you mean anything about money?" Mrs. Sorel wanted to know. "You were quite right in calling me your friend. I can assure you it would be a joy to Marise if, in your trouble, her money——"

"The trouble's worse than money."

"Tell us quickly," the girl bade him. "You said you couldn't bear suspense. Neither can I bear it. We're both fond of you, Tony—Mums and I. What hurts you, hurts us." And her tingling brain suddenly, inappropriately, gave her a picture of Garth, as he had stood tall and stiff against the door. He, too, had said, in vibrating tones, that he loved her. He had begged her to give him a chance; implored that she would let him try to be worthy. As if, poor fellow, he ever could come up to her standard! What girl of her breeding would think of him twice when there were blue-blooded, perfectly-groomed Greek gods like Tony Severance on earth? Mentally she whistled John Garth, V.C., down the wind to low-lying valleys peopled with girls like Miss Marks.

Tony was pale with the dusky pallor of olive complexions; his pleading eyes were like velvet with diamonds glittering through. She had never realised how he loved her—he, whom so many women worshipped. She felt that she loved him dearly, too. For the first time her heart was stirred warmly by his extraordinary good looks.

"You know all about my Uncle Constantine, my mother's half-brother," he said, leaning on the mantelpiece and nervously lighting a cigarette (Mrs. Sorel and Marise permitted this; even smoked with him now and then). "Well, Uncle Con had very little use for me till by a fluke I got the title. I never expected a penny of his money, though he was my mother's guardian before she ran away with my father. He thought I was a rotter, and didn't mind my knowing his opinion. He didn't exactly forbid me his house in London, for he'd been fond of mother in his hard way, but he gave me no encouragement to come. His vacillation was because of my cousin ?none. Did I ever speak of her to you?"

"You may have mentioned her," said Marise. "But, of course, we knew of her existence. There are always things in the papers about people with such incredible stacks of millions as the Ionides family have. She's a 'poor little rich girl,' isn't she? An invalid—something the matter with her spine?"

"She is an invalid," Severance answered. "But as years go, she isn't a 'little girl' any more. She's close on twenty-two. I doubt if she'll ever see twenty-three in this world."

"Pathetic!" sympathised Marise. "All that money couldn't give her happiness!"

"She thinks," said Severance sullenly, "that only one thing can give her happiness—marrying me."

"Good gracious!" gasped Mrs. Sorel. Her blood flew to her head. Was he asking Marise to love him, only to break the news that she was to be jilted?

"?none has cared, since she was a tiny child," Severance stumbled gloomily on. "It really was pathetic, then. When she began to grow up (not much in size, poor girl, but in years, you know), Uncle Con would have shut the door on me if he hadn't been afraid ?none would die of grief. He thought me cad enough to cook up some plot, and contrive to marry the girl behind his back—for her millions. But when I got the earldom, a change came o'er the spirit of his dream.... He's a born snob, is my half-Uncle Constantine! He always loved a title, and hoped he could squeeze one for himself out of some British Government, but he's never succeeded, so far. Instead of chasing me away with a stick, he invited me to come as often as possible. And just before you arranged to sail he made me a definite offer."

"You don't mean——" Mary Sorel broke down in the midst of her sentence.

"I do. He said if I would marry ?none, and 'make his daughter a countess' (real old melodrama stuff!) he'd settle a million pounds on me, on our wedding-day. Also, I'd inherit ?none's private fortune. Darling Marise, dear Mrs. Sorel, if you knew all the money troubles I've had, and have still, you'd forgive me if I told you this was a temptation."

"But you didn't yield?" Mary prompted.

"No-o. Because Marise was sailing for the States, and I couldn't let her come over here without me, to be gobbled up by some beastly American millionaire. I had to be with her. I had to!"

"That is real love," cried Mary. "I'm proud of you."

"I'm not proud of myself," he mumbled. "I got that bally mission. I persuaded Uncle Con to believe—at least I hope he more or less believed!—that it was thrust on me, instead of my doing all I knew to bag it. I told him I'd decide directly I returned to England—which would be soon. But it hasn't been soon. He's a man who gets inside information about official things. He knows the mission is finished, and I could go home any day I liked. Presently, if I'm not jolly careful, he'll find out why I don't like. Then my goose will be cooked. Marise—Mrs. Sorel—I simply can't afford to have that ............