you can trust me.' Then she recklessly set the flood gates open--laughed with tears in the laughter; drew a tragically amusing picture of her life--her anomalous position, her dependence, her hatred of the pretences, the shifts, the sordid bravado by means of which her impoverished Gaverick relatives clung on to their social birthright, the toadying of the Dowager, the worldly admonitions of Rosamond Tallant and her set--she used some of the phrases he had himself read in that letter.

Had he been in any doubt as to its authorship that doubt must now be at rest.

But he would never tell her of that episode.

For one thing, his promise to Joan bound him.

Like a stab came the remembrance of that man of whom Biddy had written--the man towards whom she had confessed a violent attraction--and who had behaved as a cad and a fortune-hunter would naturally behave.