CHAPTER VIII 

"A shade more to the right, please. There, just as you are now! Don't move! In five minutes I shall have finished for the day." 

Isobel smiled. 

"I think that your five minutes," she said, "last sometimes for a very long time. But I am not tired--no, not at all. I can stay like this if you wish until the light goes." 

"You are splendid," Mabane murmured. "The best sitter--oh, hang it, who's that?" 

"There is certainly some one at the door," Isobel remarked. 

Mabane paused in his work to shout fiercely, "Come in!" I too looked up from my writing. A woman was ushered into the room--a woman dressed in fashionable mourning, of medium height, and with a wealth of fair, fluffy hair, which seemed to mock the restraining black bands. Mrs. Burdett, visibly impressed, lingered in the background. 

The woman paused and looked around. She looked at me, and the pen slipped from my nerveless fingers. I rose to my feet. 

"Eil--Lady Delahaye!" I exclaimed. 

She inclined her head. Her demeanour was cold, almost belligerent. 

"I am glad to find you here, Arnold Greatson," she said. "You are a friend, I believe, of the man who murdered my husband?" 

"You have been misinformed, Lady Delahaye," I answered quietly. "I was not even an acquaintance of his. We met that day for the first time." 

By the faintest possible curl of the lips she expressed her contemptuous disbelief. 

"Ah!" she said. "I remember your story at the inquest. You will forgive me if, in company, I believe, with the majority who heard it, I find it a trifle improbable." 
What interrupted him?
the door,