like we'll have some lunch, and afterwards, if you'll forgive my taking the
liberty of mentioning it, you had better buy some clothes."

"You don't like this black silk?" she asked wistfully. "I got it at a store
up-town, and they told me these sort of skirts were all the rage over
here."

"Well, you can see for yourself they aren't," he remarked, a little drily.
"London is a queer place in many ways, especially about clothes. You're
either right or you're wrong, and you've got to be right, Nora. We'll see
about it presently."

They left the room together. Crawshay looked after them with interest.

"This affair," he told his companion, "grows hourly more and more
interesting. You've been up against Jocelyn Thew, you tell me. Well, I am
perfectly certain that that girl, whose coming gave him such a start, was a
young woman I had turned away from an hotel in Washington. She was in the
game then--more locally, perhaps, but still in the same game. I used to sit
and talk to her in the afternoons sometimes. Finest brown eyes I ever saw
in my life. I wonder if there is anything between her and Jocelyn Thew," he
added, looking through the door with a faintly disapproving note in his
tone,--a note which a woman would have recognised at once as jealousy.

"If you ask me, I should say no," the other answered. "I've kept tabs on
Jocelyn Thew for a bit, and I've had his _dossier_. There's never been a
woman's name mentioned in connection with him--don't seem as though he'd
ever moved round or taken a meal with one all the time he was in New York.
To tell you the truth, Mr. Crawshay, that's just what makes it so difficult
to get your hands on a man you want. Nine times out of ten it's through the