Did a little natural colour deepen the very careful tinting behind the thin haze of cigarette smoke? Catherine Welby got up gracefully and without haste.

“Well, come if you can,” she said. Then, turning before she reached the door, “Carr out?”

“He and Fancy have gone in to Lenton.”

Catherine Welby laughed.

“Is he going to marry her?”

“I shouldn’t advise you to ask him. I haven’t.”

“He’ll be damned silly if he does. She’s too like Marjory. It’ll be the same story all over again.”

“You haven’t any right to say that.”

Catherine blew her a kiss.

“Waste of time trying to high-hat me-you ought to know that after all these years. I’m just using my common sense, and you’d better use yours and choke him off if you don’t want another crash-I should think it would just about finish him. Did he ever find out who Marjory went off with?”

“No.”

“Well, she saved everyone a lot of trouble by not surviving. I mean, after she’d come back down and out and he’d taken her in and nursed her, he couldn’t very well have got a divorce, could he? Solitary instance of tact on her part, but rather wasted if he’s going to do the same thing all over again. Well, I’ll be seeing you.”

CHAPTER 4

Fancy Bell looked sideways under her long lashes and observed her companion’s gloom. With a faint sigh she turned to the much more agreeable spectacle of her own enchanting face and figure reflected in the looking-glass at the back of a milliner’s window. A bit daring that scarlet-hit or miss, as you might say-but to judge from the way in which practically every man they passed had looked and looked again, it was a hit all right.