It was the maid. It was also Mrs. Sorel, who pushed past Céline and darted into the hall.

"My darling!" she shrilled at sight of Marise. "You look as if you'd had a most horrible shock!"

It was just this that the girl had had: the shock of her life. She, undesired—not a temptation! Alone with a man—a mere brute—who had the strength and the legal right to take her against her will, but remained cold; did not want her.

She might have believed this statement to be a sequel to that hint about "hurting her feelings if he liked," but Garth's face was cold. It might have been carved from rock. It looked like rock—that red-brown kind. There was no fierce, controlled passion in the tawny eyes, such as men on the stage would carefully have betrayed in these situations, or such as men had far from carefully betrayed to her in real life, disgusting or frightening her at the time: though afterwards the scene had pleased, or—well flattered her to dwell on in safe retrospect. It was rather glorious, though sometimes painful, she'd often said to herself, the power she had to make men feel. Yet this Snow-man didn't feel at all. He simply didn't! You could see that by his icicle of a face.

"You mustn't worry, dear Mums," soothed Marise. "I'm doing the best thing for everyone: keeping up appearances! And as Major Garth dislikes me—I am not his style, it seems—I'm perfectly safe. Safe as if I were in our rooms, with you."

Garth gazed gravely at Mrs. Sorel. "She's safer than with you, Madame. I assure you she's as safe as—as if she were in cold storage."

Mary gasped.

Marise laughed.

But she felt as though she'd read in a yellow newspaper that Miss Sorel was the plainest girl and the worst actress in the world.

Mums was persuaded to go, at last, after having upbraided her daughter, with tears, for forcing them all—including Lord Severance—into such a deplorable, such a perilous situation.

As for the peril, after Garth's words, and still more his look, all thrill of danger and the chance of a fight, with a triumphant if exhausting close, had died. Marise felt dull and "anti-climaxy," and homesick for her friends, the dear public who loved and appreciated her. Céline remained to undress her mistress, having (despite Mrs. Sorel's advice) brought various articles from Marise's own room. When at last the bride was ready for bed in a dream of a "nighty" fetched by her maid, Céline thought of the jewels on a table in the salon.

By this time the room was empty, Garth having retired like a bear to his den; and the Frenchwoman took it on herself to transfer the valuables to the bedroom adjoining. "They will be safer here," she said. "Unless Mademoiselle—Madame—would like me to carry the cases to the other suite and put them in the care of Madame his mother."

"No, leave everything here," directed Marise.

She had made up her mind not to keep the gifts. They were beautiful, and she wouldn't have been a woman if she'd not wanted them. But she wanted still more the stern splendour of handing the spoil back to Garth, advising him to return the jewels whence they came, since only millionaires should buy such expensive objects. But she would not of course take a servant, even Céline—who knew ............