CHAPTER II

THE COMPACT

So petrified was Theydon by coming face to face with the last person
breathing whom he expected to meet in that room, that he stumbled over
a small chair which lay directly between him and his hostess. At any
other time the gaucherie would have annoyed him exceedingly; in the
existing circumstances, no more fortunate incident could have
happened, since it brought Evelyn Forbes herself unwittingly to the
rescue.

"I have spoken twenty times about chairs being left in that absurd
position," she cried, as their hands met, "but you know how
wooden-headed servants are. They will not learn to discriminate.
People often sit in that very place of an afternoon, because any one
seated just there sees the Canaletto on the opposite wall in the best
light. When the lamps are on, the reason for the chair simply ceases
to exist, and it becomes a trap for the unwary. You are by no means
the first who has been caught in it."

Theydon realized, with a species of irritation, that the girl was
discoursing volubly about the offending chair merely in order to
extricate an apparently shy and tongue-tied young man from a morass of
his own creation.

That an author of some note should not only behave like a country
bumpkin, but actually seem to need encouragement so that he should
"feel at home" in a London drawing room, was a fact so ridiculous that