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Agatha passed the into Sylvia's room for her wraps; and Quarrier turned to Sylvia: "Well?" he said, with the slightest hint of impatience

"Can't you stay ain thei She had never before detected that manner, that hardness in a voice always so even in quality

"What is it?" he repeated

She thought aaside for the time his manner, which she could not conorant one, perhaps It's about your Aamated Electric Company May I ask it, Howard?"

After a second's stare, "Certainly," he said

"It's only this: If the other people--the Inter-County, I amated, why don't you stop it?"

Quarrier's eyes narrowed "Oh! And who have you been discussing the matter with?"

"Mr Plank," she said simply "I asked him He shook his head, and said I'd better ask you And I do ask you"

For a an to shrink back over his beautiful teeth in one of his rare laughs

"I'll be very glad to explain it some day," he said; but there was nothe pallor

"Will you not answer now?" she asked

"No, not now But I desire you to understand it some day--some day before November And one or two other matters that it is necessary for you to understand I want to explain them, Sylvia, in such a et them And I mean to; for they are never out of my mind, and I wish theht"

He took her limp hand alatha entered, cloaked, to say good night

They kissed at parting--"life e death"--as Mortimer had sneered on a similar occasion; then Sylvia, alone, stood in her bedroo with the very ghosts of thought which eluded her, fleeing, vanishing, reappearing, to peep out at her only to fade into nothing ere she could follohere they flitted through the dark labyrinths ofhis neck in the bay- Agatha and Quarrier enter the big, yellow motor, and disappear behind the limousine And it worried him horribly, because he knew perfectly well that Quarrier had lied to hiatha Caithness; and what to do or what to say to anybody on the subject was, for the first tiarrulous ability So, for the first tiue, reassured at e he had engineered should go amiss, and his ambitions be nipped at the very instant of triumphant maturity