A Damsel in Distress

At the moment of Lord Marshmoreton's arrival, George was reading a

letter from Billie Dore, which had come by that morning's post. It

dealt mainly with the vicissitudes experienced by Miss Dore's

friend, Miss Sinclair, in her relations with the man Spenser Gray.

Spenser Gray, it seemed, had been behaving oddly. Ardent towards

Miss Sinclair almost to an embarrassing point in the early stages of

their acquaintance, he had suddenly cooled; at a recent lunch had

behaved with a strange aloofness; and now, at this writing, had

vanished altogether, leaving nothing behind him but an abrupt note

to the effect that he had been compelled to go abroad and that,

much as it was to be regretted, he and she would probably never

meet again.

"And if," wrote Miss Dore, justifiably annoyed, "after saying all

those things to the poor kid and telling her she was the only thing

in sight, he thinks he can just slide off with a 'Good-bye! Good

luck! and God bless you!' he's got another guess coming. And

that's not all. He hasn't gone abroad! I saw him in Piccadilly this

afternoon. He saw me, too, and what do you think he did? Ducked

down a side-street, if you please. He must have run like a rabbit,

at that, because, when I got there, he was nowhere to be seen. I

tell you, George, there's something funny about all this."

Having been made once or twice before the confidant of the

tempestuous romances of Billie's friends, which always seemed to go

wrong somewhere in the middle and to die a natural death before

arriving at any definite point, George was not particularly

interested, except in so far as the letter afforded rather

comforting evidence that he was not the only person in the world who

was having trouble of the kind. He skimmed through the rest of it,

and had just finished when there was a sharp rap at the front door.

"Come in!" called George.

There entered a sturdy little man of middle age whom at first sight

George could not place. And yet he had the impression that he had

seen him before. Then he recognized him as the gardener to whom he

had given the note for Maud that day at the castle. The alteration

in the man's costume was what had momentarily baffled George. When

they had met in the rose-garden, the other had been arrayed in

untidy gardening clothes. Now, presumably in his Sunday suit, it

was amusing to observe how almost dapper he had become. Really, you

might have passed him in the lane and taken him for some

neighbouring squire.