JOHN CHILCOTE, M.P. BY KATHERINE CECIL THURSTON. CHAPTER XXVIII. LODER's plan of action was arrived at before he reached Trafalgar Square. The facts of the case were simple. Chilcote had left an incriminating telegram on the bureau in the morning-room at Grosvenor Square; by an unlucky chance Lillian Astrupp had been shown into that room, where she had remained alone until the moment that Eve, either by request or accident, had found her there. The facts resolved themselves into one question What use had Lillian made of those solitary moments? Without deviation, Loder's mind turned towards one answer. Lillian was not the woman to lose an opportunity, whether the space at her command was long or short. True, Eve too had been alone in the room-while Chilcote had accompanied Lillian to the door-but of this he made small account. Eve had been there, but Lillian had been there first. Judging by precedent, by personal character, by all human probability, it was not to be supposed that anything would have been left for the second comer. So convinced was he of this that, reaching Trafalgar Square, he stopped and hailed a hansom. The moments seemed very few before the cab drew up beside the kerb, and he caught his second glimpse of the enamelled door with its silver fittings. The white and silver gleamed in the sunshine; banks of cream-coloured hyacinths were clustered on the windowsills, filling the clear air with а warm and fragrant scent. With that strange sensation of having lived through the scene before, Loder left the cab and walked walked up the steps. Instantly he pressed the bell, the door was opened by Lillian's discreet, deferential man-servant. "Is Lady Astrupp at home?" he asked. The man looked thoughtful. "Her ladyship lunched at home, sir" he began cautiously. But Loder interrupted him. "Ask her to see me," he said laconically. The servant expressed no surprise. His only comment was to throw the door wide. "If you'll wait in the white room, sir," he said, "I'll inform her ladyship." Chilcote was evidently a frequent and a favoured visitor. In this manner Loder for the second time entered the house that was so unfamiliar-and yet so familiar-in all that it suggested. Entering the drawhe ing-room, he had leisure to look about him. It was a beautiful room, large and lofty; luxury was evident on every hand, but it was not the luxury that palls or offends. Each object was graceful, and possessed its own intrinsic value. value. The atmosphere was too effeminate to appeal to him, but he acknowledged the taste and artistic delicacy it conveyed. At the moment that he made the acknowledgment, the door opened to admit Lillian. She wore the same gown of pale-coloured cloth, warmed and softened by rich furs, that she had worn on the day she and Chilcote had driven in the Park. She was drawing on her gloves as she came into the room; and pausing near the door, she looked across at Loder and laughed in her slow, amused way. "I thought it would be you!" she said enigmatically. Loder came forward. "You expected me?" he said guardedly. A sudden conviction filled him that it was not the evidence of her eyes, but something at once subtler and more definite, that prompted her recognition of him. She smiled. "Why should I expect you? On the contrary, I'm waiting to know why you're here?" He was silent for an instant; then he answered in her own light tone. "As far as that goes, let's make it my duty call-having dined with you. I'm an oldfashioned person." For a full second she surveyed him amusedly; then she spoke. "My dear Jack," she laid particular stress on the name, "I never imagined you punctilious. I should have thought bohemian would have been more the word." Loder felt disconcerted and annoyed. Either, like himself, she was fishing for information or she was deliberately playing with him. In his perplexity, he glanced across the room towards the fireplace. Lillian saw the look. "Won't you sit down? she said, indicating the couch. "I promise not to make you smoke. I shan't even ask you to take off your gloves!" Loder made no movement. His mind was unpleasantly upset. It was nearly a fortnight since he had seen Lillian, and in the interval her attitude had changed, and the change puzzled him. It might mean the philosophy of a woman who-knowing herself without adequate weapons-withdraws from a combat that has proved fruitless; or it might imply the merely catlike desire to toy with a certainty. He looked quickly at the delicate face, the green eyes somewhat obliquely set, the unreliable mouth, and instantly he inclined to the latter theory. The conviction that she possessed the telegram filled him suddenly; and with it, came the desire to put his belief to the test-to know beyond question whether her smiling unconcern meant malice or entertainment. "When you first came into the room," he said quietly, "you said 'I thought it would be you!' Why did you say that?" Again she smiled-the smile that might be malicious or might be merely amused. "Oh," she answered, "I only meant that, though I had been told Jack Chilcote wanted me, it wasn't Jack Chilcote I expected to see!" After her statement there was a pause. Loder's position was difficult. Instinctively convinced that, strong in the possession of her proof, she was enjoying his tantalised discomfort, he yet craved the actual evidence that should set his suspicions to rest. Acting upon the desire, he made a new beginning. "Do you know why I came?" he asked. Lillian looked up innocently. "It's so hard to be certain of anything in this world," she said. "But one is always at liberty to guess. Again he was perplexed. Her attitude was not quite the attitude of one who controls the game, and yet-- He looked at her with a puzzled scrutiny. Women for him had always spelt the incomprehensible; he was at his best, his strongest, his surest in the presence of men. Feeling his disadvantage, yet determined to gain his end, he made a last attempt. "How did you amuse yourself at Grosvenor Square this morning, before Eve came to you?" he asked. The effort was awkwardly blunt, but it was direct. Lillian was buttoning her glove. She did not raise her head as he spoke, but her fingers paused in their task. For a second she remained motionless, then she looked up slowly. "Oh," she said sweetly, "so I was right in my guess! You did come to find out whether I sat in the morning-room with my hands in my lap-or wandered about in search of entertainment?" Loder coloured with annoyance and apprehension. Every look, every tone, of Lillian's was distasteful to him. No microscope could have revealed her more fully to him than did his own eyesight. But it. was not the moment for personal antipathies; there were other interests than his own at stake. With new resolution he returned her glance. "Then I must still ask my first question, Why did you say 'I thought it would be you'?" His gaze was direct-so direct that it disconcerted her. She laughed a little uneasily. "Be "Because I knew." "How did you know?" "Because- "she began; then again she laughed. cause," she added quickly, as if moved by a fresh impulse, "Jack Chilcote made it very obvious to any one who was in his morning-room at twelve o'clock to-day, that it would be you and not he who would be found filling his place this afternoon! It's all very well to talk about honour; but when one walks into an empty room and sees a telegram as long as a letter open on a bureau But her sentence was never finished. Loder had heard what he came to hear; any out his hand. "I think we've confession she might have to finished-for to-day." offer was of no moment in his eyes. She slowly extended her fingers. Her expression and attitude were slightly puzzled Ia puzzlement that was either spontaneous or singularly well assumed. As their hands touched, she smiled again. "My dear girl," he broke in brusquely, "don't trouble! should make a most unsatisfactory father confessor." He spoke quickly; his colour was still high, but not with annoyance; his suspense was transformed into unpleasant certainty, but the exchange left him surer of himself. His perplexity had dropped to a quiet sense of self-reliance; his paramount desire was for solitude, in which to prepare for the task that lay before him-the most congenial task the world possessed-the unravelling of Chilcote's tangled skeins. Looking into Lillian's eyes, he smiled. Good-bye!" he said, holding "Will you drop in at the 'Arcadian' to-night?" she said. "It's the dramatised version of Other Men's Shoes'! The temptation to make you see it was too irresistible as you know. There was a pause while she waited for his answer-her head inclined to one side, her green eyes gleaming. Loder, conscious of her regard, hesitated for a moment. Then his face cleared. "Right!" he said slowly. "The 'Arcadian' to-night!" CHAPTER XXIX. Loder's frame of mind as he left Cadogan Gardens was peculiar. Once more he was living in the present the forceful, exhilarating present-and the knowledge braced him. Upon one point his mind was satisfied. Lillian Astrupp had found the telegram, and it remained to him to render her find valueless. How he proposed to do this, how he proposed to come out triumphant in face of such a situation, was a matter that as yet was shapeless in his mind; nevertheless, the danger, the sense of impending conflict, had a savour of life after the inaction of the day and night just passed. Chilcote, in his weakness and his entanglement, had turned to him, and he, in his strength and capacity, had responded to the appeal. His step was firm and his bearing assured as he turned into Grosvenor Square and walked towards the familiar house. The habit of self-deceit is as insidious and tenacious as any vice. For one moment on the night of his great speech, as he leant out of Chilcote's carriage and met Chilcote's eyes, Loder had seen himself; and under the shock of revelation had taken decisive action. But in the hours subsequent to that action the plausible himself many times that his inner voice had whispered passion, however strong, would unceasingly - soothing his never again conquer as it had wounded self-esteem, rebuild- done two nights ago. And ing, stone by stone, the temple the fact that he had come of his egotism-until at last thus candidly to Eve's room when Chilcote, panic-stricken was, to his mind, a proof that at his own action, had burst temptation could be dared. into his rooms, ready to plead Nevertheless there was someor to coerce, he had found no thing disconcerting to a strong need for either coercion or man in this merely physical perturbation; and when Eve's voice came to him at last, giving permission to enter, he paused for an instant to steady himself. Finally, with sudden decision, he opened the door and walked into the room. entreaty. By power more noon. The dignity, the air of quiet solidity, impressed him, as it never failed to do, as he crossed the large hall and ascended the stairs-the same stairs that he had descended almost as an outcast not so many hours before. He was filled with the sense of things regained; belief in his own star lifted him, as it had done a hundred times before in the same surroundings. He quickened his steps as the sensation came to him. Reaching the head of the stairs, he turned directly towards Eve's sitting-room and, gaining the door, knocked. The strength of his eagerness, the quick beating of his pulses as he waited for a response, surprised him. He had told The blinds were partly drawn; there was a scent of violets in the air, and a fire glowed warmly in the grate. He noted these things carefully, telling himself that a a man should always be alertly sensible of his surroundings; then all at once the nice balancing of detail suddenly gave way: he forgot everything but the one circumstance that Eve was standing in the window-her back to the light, her face towards him. With his pulses beating fast and an unsteady sensation in his brain, he moved forward, holding out his hand. "Eve- -” he said below his breath. But Eve remained motionless. As he came into the room she had glanced at him -a glance of quick, searching question-then, with equal suddenness, she had averted her eyes. As he drew close to her now she remained immovable. "Eve—” he said again. “I |