heavy heart. She went into the bathroom and soused her head in cold
water. When she came back a frightened Zilah was putting a small tray
on the brass-topped table by the bed.

"M'seiur Gaston," she stammered, almost crying.

Diana looked at the tray, arranged with all the dainty neatness dear to
the valet's heart, and then at the travelling clock on the table beside
it, and realised that it was an hour past her usual lunch-time and that
she was extremely hungry, after all. A little piece of paper on the
tray caught her eye, and, picking it up, she read in Gaston's clear
though minute handwriting, "At what hour does Madame desire to ride?"

The servant clearly had no intention of giving up the programme for the
afternoon without a struggle. She smiled as she added a figure to the
end of the note, and went to the curtains that divided the rooms.
"Gaston!"

"Madame!"

She passed the paper silently through the curtains and went back to her
lunch. When she sent Zilah away with the empty tray she rescued the
Vicomte de Saint Hubert's book from the floor where she had thrown it
and tried to read it dispassionately. She turned to the title-page and
studied the pencilled scrawl "Souvenir de Raoul" closely. It did not
look like the handwriting of a small-minded man, but handwriting was
nothing to go by, she argued obstinately. Aubrey, who was the essence
of selfishness, wrote beautifully, and had once been told by an expert
that his writing denoted a generous love of his fellow-men, which
deduction had aroused no enthusiasm in the baronet, and had given his