In his reports to Edna, a certain delicacy had made him touch lightly
upon the traces of Davenport's love-affair. He may, indeed, have guessed
that those traces were what she was most desirous to hear of. But a
certain manly allegiance to his sex kept him reticent on that point in
spite of all her questions. He did not even say to what motive Davenport
ascribed the false one's fickleness; nor what was Davenport's present
opinion of her. "He was thrown over by some woman whose name he never
mentions; since then he has steered clear of the sex," was what Larcher
replied to Edna a hundred times, in a hundred different sets of phrases;
and it was all he replied on the subject.

So matters stood until two days after the interview related in the
previous chapter. At the end of that interview, Larcher had said that
for the second day thereafter he was engaged; Hence he had appointed
the third day for his next meeting with Davenport. The engagement for
the second day was, to spend the afternoon with Edna Hill at a
riding-school. Upon arriving at the flat where Edna lived under the mild
protection of her easy-going aunt, he found Miss Kenby included in the
arrangement. To this he did not object; Miss Kenby was kind as well as
beautiful; and Larcher was not unwilling to show the tyrannical Edna
that he could play the cavalier to one pretty girl as well as to another.
He did not, however, manage to disturb her serenity at all during the
afternoon. The three returned, very merry, to the flat, in a state of the
utmost readiness for afternoon tea, for the day was cold and blowy. To
make things pleasanter, Aunt Clara had finished her tea and was taking a
nap. The three young people had the drawing-room, with its bright coal
fire, to themselves.

Everything was trim and elegant in this flat. The clear-skinned maid who