long."

She spoke rapidly in jerks, and turning round faced the door, her hands clasped behind her back.

"Oh, it doesn't matter! I suppose I can wait." And the visitor entered the room. "That sounds like Miss Strode's voice."

Robert Despard crossed to Ruby's side and held out his hand. He was a dark, well-set-up man, some years Ruby's senior. He was faultlessly dressed in a brown lounge suit, a light-coloured bowler placed jauntily on the back of his head, a pair of race glasses slung across his shoulders, and he wore a pair of highly-polished tan boots.

"I thought I might find you here," he continued, looking at Ruby with a familiar smile and giving a nervous twirl to his black moustache when she did not take his hand. "I saw you both at the races, but I couldn't get near you for the crowd. Thought I would look in and see how Rupert had done. I bet he came a nasty cropper over that disqualification. Can't say you're looking exactly jolly."

Ruby stepped back and forced a smile to her lips.

"Oh, we're all right!" she said unsteadily, commencing to fold up the slip of paper she had been holding in her hand behind her back. "We won."

Despard raised his eyebrows and gave a dry laugh. "I don't think! Rupert told me he plunged, on Paulus. As a matter of fact, I came round to condole with him. I knew he was pretty hard hit and all that sort of thing."

"Well, you are wrong! He doesn't want your sympathy, as it happens."

Ruby spoke almost defiantly. The colour had returned to her cheeks now. They were scarlet and her eyes were bright. There was defiance in them, too.

Despard watched her closely, and the expression on his face gradually changed. A cynical smile still played about his lips.

"You're a loyal little devil!" he said between his teeth. "By gad! I admire you for it. But let me tell you that poor old Rupert Dale is ruined. Broke to the world, and he's failed in his final, too. I'm awfully sorry for him—and all that, but there you are."

"Yes, you sound as if you were sorry," Ruby replied sarcastically. She commenced to pull on one of her gloves, then slipped the strip of folded paper underneath the glove into the palm of her hand. Despard was watching her with his small, bright eyes.

"Is that your winnings you're hiding away?" he sneered.

He threw his hat on to the table and seated himself on the arm of a chair close to Ruby.

"I wanted to see you more than I did Rupert," he said, lowering his voice. "Of course, it's all over between you two now? You wouldn't be mad enough to marry a pauper, even if he were cad enough to want you to. So don't forget that I'm just as keen on you as ever." He stretched out his arm and pulled Ruby towards him. "I knew my turn would come if I waited long enough."

Quietly but firmly Ruby released her arm, and, moving away, stood with her back to the window so that her face was in shadow. Though she despised Robert Despard, she feared him.

"You call yourself Rupert's friend, and yet you choose the very moment when you believe he is ruined to make love to the woman to whom he was engaged to be married, and under his own roof, too."

"Dash it all, it's only a lodging house!" Despard replied brutally. "But, go on, I love you when you get angry. You look as if you were a leading lady earning a hundred pounds a week instead of a show girl walking on at a couple of guineas."

"A show girl has a heart and a conscience, which is more than you've got, anyway," Ruby replied fiercely; "and Mr. Dale shall know the kind of friend he's got in you."

Despard shrugged his shoulders and suppressed a yawn. "So that's all the thanks I get. Dash it all, isn't it proof that I love you, when, directly I know your man has got the kick, I hurry down to tell you I'll take his place—look after you, pay your bills—make you my wife, anything you like in the world! I loved you long before he ever met you. I told you I didn't mean to give you up. I told you no one else should take you from me. Rupert is all right, of course; I am fond of him, but he isn't the right man for you. Now that he's come a cropper and failed in his exam., he'll have to go back to his Devonshire bog and leave me to look after you."

Ruby tried to speak, but she could not trust herself for some seconds. Despard watched her with an amused smile. Suddenly she crossed the room and opened the sitting-room door.

"I'll go out and find Rupert. You had better say to his face what you've just said to me," she cried.

She hurried downstairs out into the street. She saw Rupert coming slowly towards her and she ran to meet him.

Meanwhile, Despard left alone in the sitting-room, lit a cigarette, and rising from his chair glanced casually at the evening newspaper lying on the writing-table. Ruby had left the letter Rupert had written to his father lying on the white sheet of blotting-paper. Almost unconsciously, Despard commenced to read it. Then he picked it up and glanced hurriedly towards the door; he read it through from beginning to end. He gave a long, low whistle of astonishment, and carefully replaced the letter.

He noticed the place where the first page had been blotted on the new sheet of white blotting-paper. And just below it his quick eyes saw one small word, underneath it a couple of naughts. There was nothing particularly strange or remarkable about this. He would probably never have noticed it if the blotting-paper had not been clean. But, gradually, as he stared at the one undecipherable word with the two naughts he began to feel as if there were significance about them. They stood out on the white sheet of blotting-paper.

There was a small mirror standing on the mantel-piece. He took it up and held it over the blotting-pad. And he read reflected the single word between the two naughts. It was "hundred." A little way beyond it he noticed a single letter "s."

Replacing the mirror he stood with his back to the fireplace, his hands deep in his trousers pockets, thinking.

"Hundred," "s," and two naughts. He had seen that the slip of paper which Ruby tucked into her glove was a cheque. He was quite sure that neither she nor Rupert Dale had a hundred pounds in the world. Indeed, he knew the state of the latter's finances better than the girl did. For only a few months ago, he had lent Rupert twenty-five pounds. He stroked his black moustache thoughtfully. Before he could solve the little problem Dale himself entered the room, followed a few minutes later by Ruby.

"I came to tell you how devilish sorry I was that you had backed a loser and got plucked," Despard said; "but, hang it all, you look cheerful enough!"

"So would you," Rupert cried, slapping him on the back, "if you had had a fiver on Ambuscade at a hundred to one."

The frown deepened on Robert Despard's forehead.

"Look here, is this a joke or what?"

"It's no joke," Rupert laughed hysterically. "Ask Ruby, she did it for me! I'll tell you what we'll do. We'll all go out and have a bit of dinner together and break a bottle of wine on the strength of