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“I left him at home in deep dumps. You’ve never been to Langbury Court, have you?”

Taylor shook his head.

“Such a sweet old place! But, of course, rather dull for a young man, with nobody hut his mother and just one or two slow country neighbors.”

“Oh, a run ‘ll do him good.”

“Yes; he was quite moped;” and Mrs. Marland glanced at her companion. She wanted only a very little encouragement to impart her suspicions to him. It must, in justice to Mrs. Marland, be remembered that she had always found the simplest explanation of Charlie’s devotion to the Pool hard to accept, and the most elaborate demonstration of how a Canadian canoe may be upset unconvincing.

“You’re a great friend of his, aren’t you?” pursued Mrs. Marland. “So I suppose there’s no harm in mentioning my suspicions to you. Indeed, I daresay you could be of use to him–I mean, persuade him to be wise. I’m afraid, Mr. Taylor, that he is in some entanglement.”

“Dear, dear!” murmured Mr. Taylor.

“Oh, I’ve no positive proof, but I fear so–and a very undesirable entanglement, too, with someone quite beneath him. Yes, I think I had better tell you about it.”

Mr. Taylor sat silent and, save for a start or two, motionless while his companion detailed her circumstantial evidence. Whether it was enough to prove Mrs. Marland’s case or not–whether, that is, it is inconceivable that a young man should go to any place fourteen evenings running, and upset a friend of his youth out of a canoe, except there be a lady involved, is perhaps doubtful; but it was more than enough to show Mr. Sigismund Taylor that the confession he had listened to was based upon fact, and that Charlie Merceron was the other party to those stolen interviews, into whose exact degree of heinousness he was now inquiring. This knowledge caused Mr. Taylor to feel that he was in an awkward position.

“Now,” asked Mrs. Marland, “candidly, Mr. Taylor, can you suppose anything else than that our friend Charlie was carrying on a very pronounced flirtation with this dressmaker?”

“Dressmaker?”

“Her friend was, and I believe she was too. Something of the kind, anyhow.”

“You–you never saw the–the other person?”

“No; she kept out of the way. That looks bad, doesn’t it? No doubt she was a tawdry vulgar creature. But a man never notices that!”

At this moment two people were seen approaching. One of them was a man of middle height and perhaps five-and-thirty years of age; he was stout and thick-built; he had a fat face with bulging cheeks; his eyes were rather like a frog’s; he leant very much forward as he walked, and swayed gently from side to side with a rolling swagger; and as his body rolled, his eye rolled too, and he looked this way and that with a jovial leer and a smile of contentment and amusement on his face. The smile and the merry eye redeemed his appearance from blank ugliness, but neither of them indicated a spiritual or exalted mind.

By his side walked a girl, dressed, as Mrs. Marland enviously admitted, as really very few women in London could dress, and wearing, in virtue perhaps of the dress, perhaps of other more precious gifts, an air of assured perfection and dainty disdain. She was listening to her companion’s conversation, and did not notice Sigismund Taylor, with whom she was well acquainted.

“Dear me, who are those, I wonder?” exclaimed Mrs. Marland. “She’s very distinguee.”

“It’s Miss Glyn,” answered he.

“What–Miss Agatha, Glyn?”

“Yes,” he replied, wondering whether that little coincidence as to the ‘Agatha’ would suggest itself to anyone else.

“Lord Thrapston’s granddaughter?”

“Yes.”

“Horrid old man, isn’t he?”

“I know him very slightly.”

“And the man–who’s he?”

“Mr. Calder Wentworth.”

“To be sure. Why, they’re engaged, aren’t they? I saw it in the paper.”

“I’m sure I don’t know,” said Mr. Taylor, in a voice more troubled than the matter seemed to require. “I saw it in the paper too.”