clothes, of course, except his winter overcoat, and I’ve locked that up in the camphor cupboard on the pretext or preserving it from moth. I really don’t see what else he can raise money on. I consider that I’ve been both firm and farseeing.’

‘Has he been at the Norridrums lately?’ asked Eleanor.

‘He was there yesterday afternoon and stayed to dinner,’ said Mrs Attray. ‘I don’t quite know when he came home, but I fancy it was late.’

‘Then depend on it he was gambling,’ said Eleanor, with the assured air of one who has few ideas and makes the most of them. ‘Late hours in the country always mean gambling.’

‘He can’t gamble if he has no money and no chance of getting any,’ argued Mrs Attray; ‘even if one plays for small stakes one must have a decent prospect of paying one’s losses.’

‘He may have sold some of the Amherst pheasant chicks,’ suggested Eleanor; ‘they would fetch about ten or twelve shillings each, I dare say.’

‘Ronnie wouldn’t do such a thing,’ said Mrs Attray; ‘and anyhow I went and counted them this morning and they’re all there. No,’ she continued, with the quite satisfaction that comes from a sense of painstaking and merited achievement, ‘I fancy that Ronnie had to content himself with the role of onlooker last night, as far as the car-table was concerned.’

‘Is that clock right?’ asked Eleanor, whose eyes had been straying restlessly towards the mantelpiece for some little time; ‘lunch is usually so punctual in your establishment.’

‘Three minutes past the half-hour,’ exclaimed Mrs Attray; ‘cook must be preparing something unusually sumptuous in your honour. I am not in the secret; I’ve been out all the morning, you know.’

Eleanor smiled forgivingly. A special effort by Mrs Attray’s cook was worth waiting a few minutes for.

As a matter of fact, the luncheon face, when it made its tardy appearance, was distinctly unworthy of the reputation which the justly treasured cook had built up for herself. The soup alone would have sufficed to cast a gloom over any meal that it had inaugurated, and it was not redeemed by anything that followed. Eleanor said little, but when she spoke there was a hint of tears in her voice that was far more eloquent than outspoken denunciation would have been, and even the insouciant Ronald showed traces of depression when he tasted the rognons Saltikoff.

‘Not quite the best luncheon I’ve enjoyed in your house,’ said Eleanor at last, when her final hope had flickered out with the savoury.

‘My dear, it’s the worst meal I’ve sat down to for years,’ said her hostess; ‘that last dish tasted principally of red pepper and wet toast. I’m awfully sorry. Is anything the matter in the kitchen, Pellin?’ she asked of the attendant maid.

‘Well, ma’am, the new cook hadn’t hardly time to see to things properly, coming in so sudden—’ commenced Pellin by way of explanation.

‘The new cook!’ screamed Mrs Attray.

‘Colonel Norridrum’s cook, ma’am,’ said Pellin.

‘What on earth do you mean? What is Colonel Norridrum’s cook doing in my kitchen—and where is my cook?’