received so significant a "No sir!" that I risked an advance and after a
minute in this manner found myself, to my astonishment, face to face with
Mrs. Meldrum.

"Oh you dear thing," she exclaimed, "I'm delighted to see you: you spare
me another compromising demarche! But for this I should have called on
you also. Know the worst at once: if you see me here it's at least
deliberate--it's planned, plotted, shameless. I came up on purpose to
see him, upon my word I'm in love with him. Why, if you valued my peace
of mind, did you let him the other day at Folkestone dawn upon my
delighted eyes? I found myself there in half an hour simply infatuated
with him. With a perfect sense of everything that can be urged against
him I hold him none the less the very pearl of men. However, I haven't
come up to declare my passion--I've come to bring him news that will
interest him much more. Above all I've come to urge upon him to be
careful."

"About Flora Saunt?"

"About what he says and does: he must be as still as a mouse! She's at
last really engaged."

"But it's a tremendous secret?" I was moved to mirth.

"Precisely: she wired me this noon, and spent another shilling to tell me
that not a creature in the world is yet to know it."

"She had better have spent it to tell you that she had just passed an
hour with the creature you see before you."