"I have not," Macheson answered calmly. "I am very glad to have come across you, though."

"Sorry I can't return the compliment," Hurd remarked. "Come, Letty."

A girl who was pa.s.sing tapped him on the arm. She was dressed in blue silk, with a large picture hat, and she was smoking a cigarette.

"Hullo, Stephen!" she exclaimed. "Edith wants to see you. Are you coming round to-night?"

Hurd muttered something under his breath and moved away. Letty looked at him with horror.

"Stephen!" she exclaimed. "You can't--you don't mean to say that you know--any of these?"

She was trembling in every limb. He tried to pa.s.s his arm through hers.

"Don't be a fool, Letty," he said. "It's time we went, or my friends will have gone to bed."

She looked at him with wide-open eyes. Her lips were quivering. It was as though she saw some new thing in his face.

"Your friends," she murmured, "are they--that sort? Oh! I am afraid."

She clung to Macheson. People were beginning to notice them. He led her out into the street. Hurd followed, angrily protesting. Holderness was close behind.

"I say, you know," Hurd began, with his arm on Macheson's shoulder.

Macheson shook it off.

"Mr. Hurd," he said, "at the risk of seeming impertinent, I must ask you precisely where you intend taking this girl to-night?"

"What the devil business is it of yours?" Hurd answered angrily.

"Tell me, all the same," Macheson persisted.

Hurd pa.s.sed his arm through Letty's.

"Come, Letty," he said, "we will take this hansom."

The girl was only half willing. Macheson declined to let them go.

"No!" he said, "I will have my question answered."

Hurd turned as though to strike him, but Holderness intervened, head and shoulders taller than the other.

"I think," he said, "that we will have my friend's question answered."

Hurd was almost shaking with rage, but he answered.

"To some friends in Cambridge Terrace," he said sullenly. "Number eighteen."

"You will not object," Macheson said, "if I accompany you there?"

"I'll see you d.a.m.ned first," Hurd answered savagely. "Get in, Letty."

The girl hesitated. She turned to Macheson.

"I should like to go to the station and wait," she declared.

"I think," Macheson said, "that you had better trust yourself to me and my friend."

"I am sure of it," Holderness added calmly.

She put her hand in Macheson's. She was as pale as death and avoided looking at Hurd. He took a quick step towards her.

"Very well, young lady," he said. "If you go now, you understand that I shall never see you again."

She began to cry again.

"I wish," she murmured, "that I had never seen you at all--never!"

He turned on his heel. A row was impossible. It occurred to him that a man of the world would face such a position calmly.

"Very good," he said, "we will leave it at that."

He paused to light a cigarette, and strolled back down the street towards the restaurant which they had just left. Letty was crying now in good earnest. The two young men looked at one another in something like dismay. Then Holderness began to laugh quietly.

"You're a nice sort of Don Quixote to spend an evening with," he remarked softly.

CHAPTER XVII

THE VICTIMS OF SOCIETY

The girl was still crying, softly but persistently. She caught hold of Macheson's arm.

"If you please, I think I had better go back to Stephen," she said. "Do you think I could find him?"

"I think you had much better not, Letty," he answered. "He ought not to have let you miss your train. My friend here and I are going to look after you."

"It's very kind of you," the girl said listlessly, "but it doesn't matter much what becomes of me now. Mother will never forgive me--and the others will all know--that I missed the train."

"We must think of some way of putting that all right," Macheson declared. "I only wish that I had some relations in London. Can you suggest anything, d.i.c.k?"

"I can take the young lady to some decent rooms," Holderness answered.

"The landlady's an old friend of mine. She'll be as right as rain there."

The girl shook her head.

"I'd as soon walk about the streets," she said pathetically. "Mother'll never listen to me--or the others. Some of them saw me with Stephen, and they said things. I think I'll go to the station and wait till the five o'clock train."