I do not feel at
liberty to tell you anything without that young lady's
permission."
"You refuse?" she cried, incredulously. "You refuse a hundred
pounds?"
He opened the door of the car. He seemed scarcely to have heard
her.
"At about eleven o'clock to-morrow morning," he announced, "I
shall have the pleasure of calling upon you. I trust that you
will have decided to take the house."
CHAPTER VI
QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS
Tavernake sat a few hours later at his evening meal in the tiny
sitting-room of an apartment house in Chelsea. He wore a black
tie, and although he had not yet aspired to a dinner coat, the
details of his person and toilet showed signs of a new attention.
Opposite to him was Beatrice.
"Tell me," she asked, as soon as the small maid-servant who
brought in their first dish had disappeared, "what have you been
doing all day? Have you been letting houses or surveying land or
book-keeping, or have you been out to Marston Rise?"
It was her customary question, this. She really took an interest
in his work.
"I have been attending a rich American client," he announced, "a
compatriot of your own. I went with her to Grantham House in her
own motor-car. I believe she thinks of taking it."
"American!" Beatrice remarked. "What was her name? "
Tavernake looked up from his plate across the little table,
across the bowl of simple flowers which was its sole decoration.
"She called herself Mrs.
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