The Summons (novel) Part 2

The great cape thrusts its knees far out into the Mediterranean, and close down by the sea on the very point a lighthouse stands out from the green mass like a white pencil. South-westwards the land runs sharply back in heights of tangled undergrowths and trees, overhangs a wide bay and drops at the end of the bay to the mouth of a spacious, empty harbour. Eastwards the cape slopes inland at a gentler angle with an undercliff, a narrow plateau, and behind the plateau mountain walls. Two tiny fishing villages cluster a mile or two apart at the water's edge, and high up on the cape's flanks here and there a small rude settlement clings to the hillside. There are no roads to the cape. From the east you may ride a horse towards it, and lose your way. From the west you must approach by boat. So remote and unvisited is this region that the women in these high villages, their homes cut out of the actual brown rock, still cover their faces with the Moorish veil.

There are no roads, but José Medina was never deterred by the lack of roads. His business, indeed, was a shy one, and led him to prefer wild country. A high police official in one great town said of him:

"For endurance and activity there is no one like José Medina between the sea and the Pyrenees. You think him safe in Mallorca and look! He lands one morning from the steamer, jumps into a motor-car, and in five minutes—whish!—he is gone like the smoke of my cigarette. He will drive his car through our mountains by tracks, of which the guardia civil does not even know the existence."

By devious tracks, then, now through narrow gullies in brown and barren mountains, now striking some village path amidst peach trees and marguerites, José Medina drove Martin Hillyard down to the edge of the sea. Here amongst cactus bushes in flower, with turf for a carpet, a camp had been prepared near to one of the two tiny villages. José Medina was king in this region. The party arrived in the afternoon of the twenty-sixth day of the month, all of the colour of saffron from the dust-clouds the car had raised, and Hillyard so stiff and bruised with the intolerable jolting over ruts baked to iron, that he could hardly climb down on to the ground. He slept that night amidst such a music of birds as he had never believed possible one country could produce. Through the night of the twenty-sixth he and José Medina watched; their lanterns ready to their hands. Lights there were in plenty on the sea, but they were the lights of acetylene lamps used by the fishermen of those parts to attract the fish; and the morning broke with the lighthouse flashing wanly over a smooth sea, pale as fine jade.

"There are three more nights," said Hillyard. He was a little dispirited after the fatigue of the day before and the long, empty vigil on the top of the day.

The next watch brought no better fortune. There was no moon; the night was of a darkness so clear that the stars threw pale and tremulous paths over the surface of the water, and from far away the still air vibrated from time to time with the throbbing of propellers as the ships without lights passed along the coast.

Hillyard rose from the blanket on which he and José Medina had been lying during the night. It had been spread on a patch of turf in a break of the hill some hundreds of feet above the sea. He was cold. The blanket was drenched and the dew hung like a frost on bush and grass.

"It looks as if they had found out," he said.

"This is only the second night," said José Medina.

"It all means so much to me," replied Hillyard, shivering in the briskness of the morning.

"Courage, the little Marteen!" cried José Medina. "After breakfast and a few hours' sleep, we shall take a rosier view."

Hillyard, however, could not compose himself to those few hours. The dread lest the Germans should have discovered the interception of their letters weighed too heavily upon him. Even in the daylight he needs must look out over that placid sunlit sea and imagine here and there upon its surface the low tower and grey turtle-back of a submarine. Success here might be so great a thing, so great a saving of lives, so dire a blow to the enemy. Somehow that day slowly dragged its burning hours to sunset, the coolness of the evening came, and the swift darkness upon its heels, and once more, high up on the hillside, the vigil was renewed. And at half-past one in the morning, far away at sea, a green light, bright as an emerald, flashed thrice and was gone.

"Did I not say to you, 'Have courage'?" said José Medina.

"Quick! the Lanterns!" replied Hillyard. "The red first! Good! Now the white. So! And the red again. Now we must wait!" and he sank down again upon the blanket. All the impatience and languor were gone from him. The moment had come. He was at once steel to meet it.

"Yes," said José Medina, "we shall see nothing more now for a long while."

They heard no sound in that still night; they saw no gleam of lights. It seemed to Hillyard that aeons passed before José touched him on the elbow and pointed downwards.

"Look!" he whispered excitedly.

Right at their very feet the long, grim vessel lay, so near that Hillyard had the illusion he could pitch a stone on to the conning tower. He now held his breath, lest his breathing should be heard. Then the water splashed, and a moment afterwards the submarine turned and moved to sea. They gave it five minutes, and then climbed down to a tiny creek. A rowing-boat lay in readiness there, with one man at the tiller and two at the oars.

"You saw it, Manuel?" said Medina as he and Hillyard stepped in.

"Yes, Señor José. It was very close. Oh, they know these waters!"

The oars churned the phosphorescent water into green fire, and the foam from the stem of the boat sparkled as though jewels were scattered into it by the oarsmen as they rowed. They stopped alongside a little white buoy which floated on the water. The buoy was attached to a rope; that again to a chain. A mat was folded over the side of the boat and the chain drawn cautiously in and coiled without noise. Hillyard saw the two men who were hauling it in bend suddenly at their work and heave with a greater effort.

"It is coming," said one of them, and the man at the tiller went forward to help them. Hillyard leaned over the side of the heavy boat and stared down into the water. But the night was too dark for him to see anything but the swirl of green fire made by the movement of the chain and the fire-drops falling from the links. At last something heavy knocked against the boat's flanks.

"Once more," whispered the man from the tiller. "Now!"

And the load was perched upon the gunwale and lowered into the boat. It consisted of three square and bulky metal cases, bound together by the chain.

"We have it, my friend Marteen," whispered José Medina, with a laugh of sheer excitement. He was indeed hardly less stirred than Hillyard himself. "Not for nothing did the little Marteen lead the horse across the beach of Benicassim. Now we will row back quickly. We must be far away from here by the time the world is stirring."

The boatmen bent to their oars with a will, and the boat leaped upon the water. They had rowed for fifty yards when suddenly far away a cannon boomed. The crew stopped, and every one in the boat strained his eyes seawards. Some one whispered, and Hillyard held up his hand for silence. Thus they sat immobile as figures of wax for the space of ten minutes. Then Hillyard relaxed from his attention.

"They must have got her plump with the first shot," he said; and, indeed, there was no other explanation for that boom of a solitary cannon across the midnight sea.

José Medina laughed.

"So the little Marteen had made his arrangements?"

"What else am I here for?" retorted the little Marteen, and though he too laughed, a thrill of triumph ran through the laugh. "It just needed that shot to round all off. I was so afraid that we should not hear it, that it might never be fired. Now it will never be known, if your men keep silent, whether they sunk their cargo or were sunk with it on board."

The crew once more drove the blades of their oars through the water, and did not slacken till the shore was reached. They clambered up the rocks to their camp bearing their treasure, and up from the camp again to the spot where José's motor-car was hidden. José talked to the boatmen while the cans were stowed away in the bottom of the car, and then turned to Hillyard.

"There will be no sign of our camp at daybreak. The tent will be gone—everything. If our luck holds—and why should it not?—no one need ever know that the Señor Marteen and his friend José Medina picnicked for three days upon that cape."

"But the lighthouse-keepers! What of them?" objected Hillyard. In him, too, hope and excitement were leaping high. But this objection he offered up on the altars of the gods who chastise men for the insolence of triumph.

"What of them?" José Medina repeated gaily. "They, too, are my friends this many a year." He seated himself at the wheel of the car. "Come, for we cannot drive fast amongst these hills in the dark."

Hillyard will never forget to the day of his death that wild passage through the mountains. Now it was some sudden twist to avoid a precipice, now a jerk and a halt whilst José stared into the darkness ahead of him; here the car jolted suddenly over great stones, then it sank to the axle in soft dust; at another place the bushes whipped their faces; and again they must descend and build a little bridge of boughs and undergrowth over a rivulet. But so high an elation possessed him that he was unconscious both of the peril and the bruises. He could have sung aloud. They stopped an hour after daybreak and breakfasted by the side of the car in a high country of wild flowers. The sun was hidden from them by a barrier of hills.

"We shall strike an old mine-road in half an hour," said José Medina, "and make good going."

They came into a district of grey, weathered rock, and, making a wide circuit all that day, crept towards nightfall down to the road between Aguilas and Cartagena; and once more the sea lay before them.

"We are a little early," said Medina. "We will wait here until it is dark. The carabineros are not at all well disposed to me, and there are a number of them patrolling the road."

They were above the road and hidden from it by a hedge of thick bushes. Between the leaves Hillyard could see a large felucca moving westwards some miles from the shore and a long way off on the road below two tiny specks. The specks grew larger and became two men on horses. They became larger still, and in the failing light Hillyard was just able to distinguish that they wore the grey uniform of the Guardia Civil.

"Let us pray," said Medina with a note of anxiety in his voice, "that they do not become curious about our fishing-boat out there!"

As he spoke the two horsemen halted, and did look out to sea. They conversed each with the other.

"If I were near enough to hear them!" said José Medina, and he suddenly turned in alarm upon Hillyard. "What are you doing?" he said.

Hillyard had taken a large.38 Colt automatic pistol from his pocket. His face was drawn and white and very set.

"I am doing nothing—for the moment," he answered. "But those two men must ride on before it is dark and too late for me to see them."

"But they are of the Guardia Civil," José Medina expostulated in awed tones.

To the Spaniard, the mere name of the Guardia Civil, so great is its prestige, and so competent its personnel, inspires respect.

"I don't care," answered Hillyard savagely. "In this war why should two men on a road count at all? Let them go on, and nothing will happen."

José Medina, who had been assuming the part of protector and adviser to his young English friend, had now the surprise of his life. He found himself suddenly relegated to the second place and by nothing but sheer force of character. Hillyard rested the point of his elbow on the earth and supported the barrel of his Colt upon his left forearm. He aimed carefully along the sights.

"Let them go on!" he said between his teeth. "I will give them until the last moment—until the darkness begins to hide them. But not a moment longer. I am not here, my friend, for my health. I am here because there is a war."

"The little Marteen" was singularly unapparent at this moment. Here was just the ordinary appalling Englishman who had not the imagination to understand what a desperately heinous crime it would be to kill two of the Guardia Civil, who was simply going to do it the moment it became necessary, and would not lose one minute of his sleep until his dying day because he had done it. José Medina was completely at a loss as he looked into the grim indifferent face of his companion. The two horsemen were covered. The Colt would kill at more than five hundred yards, and it had no more to do than carry sixty. And still those two fools sat on their horses, and babbled to one another, and looked out to sea.

"What am I to do with this loco Inglès?" José Medina speculated, wringing his hands in an agony of apprehension. He had no share in those memories which at this moment invaded Martin Hillyard, and touched every fibre of his soul. Martin Hillyard, though his eye never left the sights of his Colt nor his mind wavered from his purpose, was with a subordinate consciousness stealing in the dark night up the footpath between the big, leafy trees over the rustic railway bridge to the summit of the hill. He was tramping once more through lanes, between fields, and stood again upon a hillock of Peckham Rye, and saw the morning break in beauty and in wonder over London. The vision gained from the foolish and romantic days of his boyhood, steadied his finger upon the trigger after all these years.

Then to José's infinite relief the two horsemen rode on. The long, black, shining barrel of the Colt followed them as they dwindled on the road. They turned a corner, and as Hillyard replaced his pistol in his pocket, José Medina rolled over on his back, and clapped his hands to his face.

"You might have missed," he gasped. "One of them at all events."

Hillyard turned to him with a grin. The savage was not yet exorcised.

"Why?" he asked. "Why should I have missed one of them? It was my business not to."

José Medina flung up his hands.

"I will not argue with you. We are not made of the same earth."

Hillyard's face changed to gentleness.

"Pretty nearly, my friend," he said, and he laid a hand on José Medina's shoulder. "For we are good friends—such good friends that I do not scruple to drag you into the same perils as myself."

Hillyard had not wasted his time during those three years when he loafed and worked about the quays of Southern Spain. He touched the right chord now with an unerring skill. Hillyard might be the mad Englishman, the loco Inglès! But to be reckoned by one of them as one of them—here was an insidious flattery which no one of José Medina's upbringing could possibly resist.

At nightfall they drove down across the road on to the beach. A rowing-boat was waiting, and Medina's manager from Alicante beside the boat on the sand. The cases were quickly transferred from the car to the boat.

"We will take charge of the car," said José to his manager, and he stepped into the boat, and sat down beside Hillyard. "This is my adventure. I see it through to the end," he explained.

A mile away the felucca picked them up. Hillyard rolled himself up in a rug in the bows of the boat. He looked up to the stars tramping the sky above his head.

"And gentlemen in England now a-bed."

Drowsily he muttered the immemorial line, and turning on his side slept as only the tired men who know they have done their work can sleep. He was roused in broad daylight. The felucca was lying motionless upon the water; no land was anywhere in sight; but above the felucca towered the tall side of the steam yacht Dragonfly.

Fairbairn was waiting at the head of the ladder. The cases were carried into the saloon and opened. The top cases were full of documents and letters, some private, most of them political.

"These are for the pundits," said Hillyard. He put them back again, and turned to the last case. In them were a number of small glass tubes, neatly packed in cardboard boxes with compartments lined with cotton wool.

"This is our affair, Fairbairn," he said. He took one out, and a look of perplexity crept over his face. The tube was empty. He tried another and another, and then another; every one of the tubes was empty.

"Now what in the world do you make of that?" he asked.

The tubes had yet to be filled and there was no hint of what they were to be filled with.

"What I am wondering about is why they troubled to send the tubes at all?" said Fairbairn slowly. "There's some reason, of course, something perhaps in the make of the glass."

He held one of the tubes up to the light. There was nothing to distinguish it from any one of the tubes in which small tabloids are sold by chemists.

Hillyard got out of his bureau the letter in which these tubes were mentioned.

"'They have been successful in France,'" he said, quoting from the letter. "The scientists may be able to make something of them in Paris. This letter and the tubes together may give a clue. I think that I had better take one of the boxes to Paris."

"Yes," said Fairbairn gloomily. "But——" and he shrugged his shoulders.

"But it's one of the ninety per cent. which go wrong, eh?" Hillyard finished the sentence with bitterness. Disappointment was heavy upon both men. Hillyard, too, was tired by the tension of these last sleepless days. He had not understood how much he had counted upon success.

"Yes, it's damnably disheartening," he cried. "I thought these tubes might lead us pretty straight to B45."

"B45!"

The exclamation came from José Medina, who was leaning against the doorpost of the saloon, half in the room, half out on the sunlit deck. He had placed himself tactfully aloof. The examination of the cases was none of his business. Now, however, his face lit up.

"B45." He shut the door and took a seat at the table. "I can tell you about B45."

It was Hillyard's creed that chance will serve a man very capably, if he is equipped to take advantage of its help; and here was an instance. The preparation had begun on the morning when Hillyard took the Dragonfly into the harbour of Palma. Chance had offered her assistance some months later in an hotel at Madrid; as Medina was now to explain.

"The day after you left Mallorca," said José Medina, "it was known all over Palma that you had come to visit me."

"Of course," answered Martin.

"I was in consequence approached almost immediately, by the other side."

"I expected that. It was only natural."

"There is a young lady in Madrid," continued José Medina.

"Carolina Muller?"

"No."

"Rosa Hahn, then."

"Yes," said José Medina.

José rose and unlocking a drawer in his bureau took out from it a sheaf of photographs. He selected one and handed it with a smile to Hillyard. It was the portrait of a good-looking girl, tall, dark, and intelligent, but heavy about the feet, dressed in Moorish robes, and extended on a divan in Oriental indolence against a scene cloth which outdid the luxuries of Llalla Rookh.

"That's the lady, I think."

Medina gazed at the picture with delight. He touched his lips with his fingers, and threw a kiss to it. His sharp, sallow face suddenly flowered into smiles.

"Yes. What a woman! She has real intelligence," he exclaimed fervently.

José Medina was in the habit of losing his heart and keeping his head a good many times in an ordinary year.

"It's an extraordinary thing," Martin Hillyard remarked, "that however intelligent they are, not one of these young ladies can resist the temptation to have her portrait taken in Moorish dress at the photographer's in the Alhambra."

José Medina saw nothing at all grotesque or ridiculous in this particular foible.

"They make such charming pictures," he cried.

"And it is very useful for us, too," remarked Hillyard. "The photographer is a friend of mine."

José was still gazing at the photograph.

"Such a brain, my friend! She never told a story the second time differently, however emotional the moment. She never gave away a secret."

"She probably didn't know any," said Hillyard.

But José would not hear of such a reason.

"Oh, yes! She has great influence. She knows people in Berlin—great people. She is their friend, and I cannot wonder. What an intelligence!"

Martin Hillyard laughed.

"She seems to have fairly put it over you at any rate," he said. He was not alarmed at José Medina's fervour. For he knew that remarkable man's capacity for holding his tongue even in the wildest moments of his temporary passions. But he took the photograph away from Medina and locked it up again. The rapturous reminiscences of Rosa Hahn's intelligence checked the flow of that story which was to lead him to B45.

"So you know about her?" José said with an envious eye upon the locked drawer.

"A little," said Martin Hillyard.

Rosa Hahn was a clerk in the office of the Hamburg-Amerika Line before the war, and in the Spanish Department. She was sent to Spain in the last days of July, 1914, upon Government work, and at a considerable salary, which she enjoyed. She seemed indeed to have done little else, and Berlin, after a year, began to complain. Berlin had a lower opinion of both her social position and her brains than José Medina had formed. Berlin needed results, and failing to obtain them, proceeded to hint more and more definitely that Rosa had better return to her clerk's stool in Hamburg. Rosa, however, had been intelligent enough to make friends with one or two powerful Germans in Spain; and they pleaded for her with this much success. She was given another three months within which period she must really do something to justify her salary. So much Martin Hillyard already knew; he learnt now that José Medina had provided the great opportunity. To snatch him with his two hundred motor feluccas and his eighteen thousand men from the English—here was something really worth doing.

"What beats me," said Hillyard, "is why they didn't try to get at you before."

"They didn't," said Medina.

Rosa, it seemed, used the argument which is generally sound; that the old and simple tricks are the tricks which win. She discovered the hotel at which José Medina stayed in Madrid, and having discovered it she went to stay there herself. She took pains to become friendly with the manager and his staff, and by professing curiosity and interest in the famous personage, she made sure not only that she would have fore-warning of his arrival, but that José Medina himself would hear of a charming young lady to whom he appealed as a hero of romance. She knew José to be of a coming-on disposition—and the rest seemed easy. Only, she had not guarded against the workings of Chance.

The hotel was the Hotel de Napoli, not one of the modern palaces of cement and steel girders, built close to the Prado, but an old house near the Puerto del Sol, a place of lath and plaster walls and thin doors; so that you must not raise your voice unless you wish your affairs to become public property. To this house José Medina came as he had many times come before, and Chance willed that he should occupy the next room to that occupied by Rosa Hahn. It was the merest accident. It was the merest accident, too, that José Medina whilst he was unpacking his bag heard his name pronounced in the next room. José Medina, with all his qualities, was of the peasant class with much of the peasant mind. He was inquisitive, and he was suspicious. Let it be said in his defence that he had enemies enough ready to pull him down, not only, as we have seen, amongst his rivals on the coast, but here, amongst the Government officials of Madrid. It cost him a pretty penny annually to keep his balance on the tight-rope, as it was. He stepped noiselessly over to the door and listened. The voices were speaking in Spanish, one a woman's voice with a guttural accent.

"Rosa Hahn," said Hillyard as the story was told to him in the cabin of the yacht.

"The other a man's voice. But again it was a foreign voice, not a Spaniard's. But I could not distinguish the accent."

"Greek, do you think?" asked Hillyard. "There is a Levantine Greek high up in the councils of the Germans."

José Medina, however, did not know.

"Here were two foreigners talking about me, and fortunately in Spanish. I was to arrive immediately; Rosa was to make my acquaintance. What my relations were with this man, Hillyard—yes, you came into the conversation, my friend, too—I was quickly to be persuaded to tell. Oh—you have a saying—everything in your melon patch was lovely."

"Not for nothing has the American tourist come to Spain," Hillyard murmured.

"Then their voices dropped a little, and your B45 was mentioned—once or twice. And a name in connection with B45 once or twice. I did not understand what it was all about."

"But you remember the name!" Fairbairn exclaimed eagerly.

"Yes, I do."

"Well, what was it?"

It was again Fairbairn who spoke. Hillyard had not moved, nor did he even look up.

"It was Mario Escobar," said José Medina; and as he spoke he knew that the utterance of the name awakened no surprise in Martin Hillyard. Hillyard filled his pipe from the tobacco tin, and lighted it before he spoke.

"Do you know anything of this Mario Escobar?" he asked, "you who know every one?"

José Medina shrugged his shoulders, and threw up his hands.

"There was some years ago a Mario Escobar at Alicante," and José Medina saw Hillyard's eyes open and fix themselves upon him with an unblinking steadiness. Just so José Medina imagined might some savage animal in a jungle survey the man who had stumbled upon his lair.

"That Mario Escobar, a penniless, shameless person, was in business with a German, the German Vice-Consul. He went from Alicante to London."

"Thank you," said Hillyard. He rose from his chair and went to the window. But he saw nothing of the deck outside, or the sea beyond. He saw a man at a supper party in London a year before the war began, betraying himself by foolish insistent questions uttered in fear lest his close intimacy with Germans in Alicante should be known.

"I have no doubt that Mario Escobar came definitely to England, long before the war, to spy," said Hillyard gravely. He returned to the table, and took up again one of the empty glass tubes.

"I wonder what he was to do with these."

José Medina had opened the door of the saloon once more. A beam of sunlight shot through the doorway, and enveloped Hillyard's arm and hand. The tiny slim phial glittered like silver; and to all of them in the cabin it became a sinister engine of destruction.

"That, as you say, is your affair. I must go," said José, and he shook hands with Hillyard and Fairbairn, and went out on to the deck. "Hasta luego!"

"Hasta ahora!" returned Hillyard; and José Medina walked down the steps of the ladder to his felucca. The blue sea widened between the two vessels; and in a week, Hillyard descended from a train on to the platform of the Quai D'Orsay station in Paris. He had the tubes in his luggage, and one box of them he took that morning to Commandant Marnier at his office on the left bank of the river with the letter which gave warning of their arrival.

"You see what the letter says," Hillyard explained. "These tubes have been very successful in France."

Marnier nodded his head:

"If you will leave them with me, I will show them to our chemists, and perhaps, in a few days, I will have news for you."

For a week Hillyard took his ease in Paris and was glad of the rest in the midst of those strenuous days. He received one morning at his hotel, a batch of letters, many of which had been written months before. But two were of recent date. Henry Luttrell wrote to him:

"My battalion did splendidly and our debt to old Oakley is great. There is only a handful of us left and we are withdrawn, of course, from the lines. By some miracle I escaped without a hurt. Everybody has been very generous, making it up to us for our bad times. The Corps Commander came and threw bouquets in person, and we hear that D. H. himself is going out of his way to come and inspect us. I go home on leave in a fortnight and hope to come back in command of the battalion. Perhaps we may meet in London. Let me hear if that is possible."

The second letter had been sent from Rackham Park, and in it Millie Splay wrote:

"We have not heard from you for years. Will you be in England this August? We are trying to gather again our old Goodwood party. Both Dennis Brown and Harold Jupp will be home on leave. There will be no Goodwood of course, but there is a meeting at Gatwick which is easily reached from here. Do come if you can and bring your friend with you, if he is in London and has nothing better to do. We have all been reading about him in the papers, and Chichester is very proud of belonging to the same mess, and says what a wonderful thing it must be to be able to get into the papers like that, without trying to."

Hillyard could see the smile upon Lady Splay's face as she wrote that sentence. Hillyard laughed as he read it but it was less in amusement as from pleasure at the particular information which this sentence contained. Harry Luttrell had clearly won a special distinction in the hard fighting at Thiepval. There was not a word in Harry's letter to suggest it. There would not be. All his pride and joy would be engrossed by the great fact that his battalion had increased its good name.

There was a closing sentence in Millie Splay's letter which brought another smile to his lips.

"Linda Spavinsky is, alas, going as strong as ever. She was married last meek, in violet, as you will remember, to the Funeral March of a Marionette and already she is in the throes of domestic unhappiness. Her husband, fleshy, of course, red in the face, and accustomed to sleep after dinner, simply won't understand her."

Here again Hillyard was able to see the smile on Millicent Splay's face, but it was a smile rather rueful and it ended, no doubt, in a sigh of annoyance. Hillyard himself was caught away to quite another scene. He was once more in the small motor-car on the top of Duncton Hill, and looked out over the Weald of Sussex to the Blackdown and Hindhead, and the slopes of Leith Hill, imagined rather than seen, in the summer haze. He saw Joan Whitworth's rapt face, and heard her eager cry.

"Look out over the Weald of Sussex, so that you can carry it away with you in your breast. Isn't it worth everything—banishment, suffering—everything? Not the people so much, but the earth itself and the jolly homes upon it!"

A passage followed which disturbed him:

"There are other things too. My magnolia is still in bud. I dread a blight before the flower opens."

It was a cry of distress—nothing less than that—uttered in some moment of intense depression. Else it would never have been allowed to escape at all.

Hillyard folded up the letter. He would be going home in any case. There were those tubes. There was B-45. He had enjoyed no leave since he had left England. Yes, he would go down to Rackham Park, and take Harry Luttrell with him if he could.

Two days later the Commandant Marnier came to see him at the Ritz Hotel. They dined together in a corner of the restaurant.

"We have solved the problem of those tubes," said Marnier. "They are nothing more nor less than time-fuses."

"Time-fuses!" Hillyard repeated. "I don't understand."

"Listen!"

Marnier looked around. There was no one near enough to overhear him, if he did not raise his voice; and he was careful to speak in a whisper.

"Two things." He ticked them off upon his fingers. "First, hydrofluoric acid when brought into contact with certain forms of explosive will create a fire. Second, hydrofluoric acid will bite its way through glass. The thicker the glass, the longer the time required to set the acid free. Do you follow?"

"Yes," said Hillyard.

"Good! Make a glass tube of such thickness that it will take hydrofluoric acid four hours and a half to eat its way through. Then fill it with acid and seal it up. You have a time-fuse which will act precisely in four hours and a half."

"If it comes into contact with the necessary explosive," Hillyard added.

"Exactly. Now attend to this! Our workmen in our munition factories work three hours and a half. Then they go to their luncheon."

"Munition factories!" said Hillyard with a start.

"Yes, my friend. Munition factories. We are short of labour as you know. Our men are in the firing line. We must get labour from some other source. And there is only one source."

"The neutrals," Hillyard exclaimed.

"Yes, the neutrals, and especially the neutrals who are near to us, who can come without difficulty and without much expense. We have a good many Spanish workmen in our munition factories and three of these factories have recently been burnt down. We have the proof now, thanks to you, that those little glass tubes so carefully manufactured in Berlin to last four hours and a half and no more, set the fires going."

"Proof, you say?" Hillyard asked earnestly. "It is not probability or moral certainty? It is actual bed-rock proof?"

"Yes. For once our chemists had grasped how these tubes could be used, we knew what to look for when the workmen were searched on entering the factory. Two days ago we caught a man. He had one of these little tubes in his mouth and in the lining of his waistcoat, just a little high explosive, so little was necessary that it must escape notice unless you knew what to search for. Yes, we caught him and he, the good fellow, the good honest neutral"—it would be difficult to describe the bitterness and scorn which rang through Marnier's words, "has been kind enough to tell me how he earned his German pay as well as his French wages."

Hillyard leaned forward.

"Yes, tell me that!"

"On his way to the factory in the morning, he makes a call."

"Yes."

"The one on whom he calls fills the tube or has it just filled and gives it to the workman. The time fuse is set for four hours and a half. The workman has so arranged it that he will reach the factory half an hour after the tube is filled. He passes the searcher. At his place he takes off his waistcoat and hangs it up and in the pocket, just separated from the explosive by the lining of the waistcoat, he places, secretly, the tube. The tube has now four hours of life and the workman three and a half hours of work. When the whistle goes to knock off for luncheon, the workman leaves his waist coat still hanging up on the peg and goes out in the stream. But half an hour afterwards, half-way through the hour of luncheon, the acid reaches the explosive. There is a tiny explosion in that empty hall, not enough to make a great noise, but quite enough to start a big fire; and when the workmen return, the building is ablaze. No lives are lost, but the factory is burnt down."

Hillyard sat for a little while in thought.

"Perhaps you can tell me," he said at length. "I hear nothing from England or very little; and naturally. Are we obtaining Spanish workmen, too, for our munition factories?"

"Yes."

It was clear now why B45 was especially suitable for this work. B45 was Mario Escobar, a Spaniard himself.

"And filling the tubes! That is simple?"

"A child could do it," answered Marnier.

"Thank you," said Martin Hillyard.

The next evening he left Paris and travelling all night to Boulogne, reached London in the early afternoon of the following day. Twenty months had passed since he had set foot there.

Hillyard landed in England athirst for grey skies. Could he have chosen the season of the year which should greet him, he would have named October. For the ceaseless bright blue of sea and heaven had set him dreaming through many a month past, of still grey mornings sweet with the smell of earth and thick hedgerows and the cluck of pheasants. But there were at all events the fields wondrously green after the brown hill-sides and rusty grass, the little rich fields in the frames of their hedges, and the brown-roofed houses and the woods splashing their emerald branches in the sunlight. Hillyard travelled up through Kent rejoicing. He reached London in the afternoon, and leaving his luggage in his flat walked down to the house in the quiet street behind the Strand whence Commodore Graham overlooked the Thames.

But even in this backwater the changes of the war were evident. The brass plates had all gone from the door post and girls ran up and down the staircases in stockings which some Allied fairies had woven on Midsummer morning out of cobwebs of dew. They were, however, as unaware as of old of any Commodore Graham. Was he quite certain that he wanted to see Commodore Graham. And why? And, after all, was there a Commodore Graham? Gracious damsels looked blandly at one another, with every apparent desire to assist this sunburnt stranger. It seemed to Hillyard that they would get for him immediately any one else in the world whom he chose to name. It was just bitterly disappointing and contrarious that the one person he wished to see was a Commodore Graham. Oh, couldn't he be reasonable and ask for somebody else?

"Very well," said Hillyard with a smile. "There was a pretty girl with grey eyes, and I'll see her."

"The description is vague," said the young lady demurely.

"She is Miss Cheyne."

"Oh!" said one.

"Oh!" said another; and

"Will you follow me, please?" said a third, who at once became business-like and brisk, and led him up the stairs. The door was still unvarnished. Miss Cheyne opened it, wearing the composed expression of attention with which she had greeted Hillyard when he had sought admission first. But her face broke up into friendliness and smiles, when she recognised him, and she drew him into the room.

"The Commodore's away for a week," she said. "He had come to the end: no sleep, nerves all jangled. He is up in Scotland shooting grouse."

Hillyard nodded. His news could wait a week very well, since it had waited already two years.

"And you?" he asked.

"Oh, I had a fortnight," replied Miss Cheyne, her eyes dancing at the recollection. It was her pleasure to sail a boat in Bosham Creek and out towards the Island. "Not a day of rain during the whole time."

"I think that I might have a month then, don't you?" said Hillyard, and Miss Cheyne opined that there would be no objection.

"But you will come back in a week," she stipulated, "won't you? The Commodore will be here on Thursday, and there are things accumulating which he must see to. So will you come on Friday?"

"Friday morning," Hillyard suggested.

Thursday was the day on which he should have travelled down to Rackham Park, but if he could finish his business on Friday morning, he would only lose one day.

"Friday morning then," said Miss Cheyne, and made a note of it.

Hillyard had thus a week in which to resume his friendships, arrange to write, at some distant time, a play, revisit his club and his tailor, and revel, as at a pageant, in the fresh beauty, the summer clothes, the white skin and clean-limbed boyishness of English girls. He went through, in a word, the first experiences of most men returned from a long sojourn in other climes; and they were ordinary enough. But the week was made notable for him by one small incident.

It was on the Monday and about five o'clock in the afternoon. He was walking from the Charing Cross Road towards Leicester Square, when, from a doorway ahead of him, a couple emerged. They did not turn his way but preceded him, so that he only saw their backs. But he had no doubt who one of the couple was. The fair hair, the tall, slim, long-limbed figure, the perverse sloppiness of dress which could not quite obscure her grace of youth, betrayed the disdainful prodigy of Rackham Park. The creator of Linda Spavinsky swam ahead of him. Had he doubted her identity, a glance at the door from which she had emerged would have dispelled the doubt. It was the entrance to a picture gallery, where, cubes and curves having served their turn and gone, the rotundists were having an innings. Everybody and everything was in rounds, palaces and gardens and ships and Westminster Bridge, and men and women were all in circles. The circle was the principle of life and art. Joan Whitworth would be drawn to the exhibition as a filing to a magnet. Undoubtedly Joan Whitworth was ahead of Hillyard and he began to hurry after her. But he checked himself after a few paces. Or rather the aspect of her companion checked him. His appearance was vaguely familiar, but that was all. It was not certainly Sir Chichester Splay, for the all-sufficient reason that the Private View had long gone by; since the very last week of the exhibition was announced in the window. Moreover, the man in front of him was younger than Sir Chichester.

The couple, however, crossed the road to the Square Garden, and Hillyard saw the man in profile. He stopped so suddenly that a man walking behind him banged heavily against his back. The man walked on and turned round after he had passed to stare at Hillyard. For Hillyard stood stock still, he was unaware that any one had run into him, in all his body his lips alone moved.

"Mario," he whispered. "Mario Escobar!"

The man who had been so far the foremost in his thoughts during the last weeks that he never thought that he could have failed to recognise him. Mario Escobar! And with Joan Whitworth. Millicent Splay's letter flashed back into his memory. The distress which he had seemed to hear loud behind the written words—was this its meaning and explanation? Joan Whitworth and Mario Escobar! Certainly Joan knew him! He was sitting next to her on the night when "The Dark Tower" was produced, sitting next to her, and talking to her. Sir Charles Hardiman had used some phrase to describe that conversation. Hillyard was strangely anxious to recapture the phrase. Escobar was talking to her with an air of intimacy a little excessive in a public place. Yes, that was the sentence.

Hillyard walked on quickly to his club.

"Is Sir Charles Hardiman here?" he asked of the hall porter.

"He is in the card-room, sir."

Martin Hillyard went up the stairs with a sense of relief. His position was becoming a little complicated. Mario Escobar was B45, and a friend of Joan Whitworth, and a friend of the Splays. There was one point upon which Martin Hillyard greatly needed information.

Hardiman, a little heavier and broader and more obese than when Hillyard had last seen him, was sitting by a bridge table overlooking the players. He never played himself, nor did he ever bet upon the game, but he took a curious pleasure in looking on, and would sit in the card-room by the hour engrossed in the fall of the cards. The sight of Hillyard, however, plucked him out of his occupation.

"So you're back!" he cried, heaving himself heavily out of his chair and shaking hands with Martin.

"For a month."

"I hear you have done very well," Sir Charles continued. "Have a whisky-and-soda."

"Thanks."

Hardiman touched the bell and led the way over to a sofa.

"Lucky man! The doctor's read the Riot Act to me! I met Luttrell in the Mall this morning, on his way back from Buckingham Palace. He had just been given his D.S.O."

Hardiman began to sit down, but the couch was low, and though he began the movement lazily, it went suddenly with a run, so that the springs of the couch jumped and twanged and his feet flew from beneath him.

"Yes, he has done splendidly," said Martin. "His battalion too. That's what he cares about."

Sir Charles needed a moment or two after he had set down to recover his equipoise. He wiped his forehead with his handkerchief.

"Luttrell told me you were both off to Rackham Park this week for Gatwick."

"That's right! But I shan't get down until Friday afternoon," said Hillyard.

The waiter put the glass of whisky-and-soda at his side, and he took a drink from it.

"Perhaps you are going too," he suggested.

Hardiman shook his head.

Hillyard was silent for a minute. Then he asked another question.

"Do you know who is going to be there beside Luttrell and myself?"

Sir Charles smiled.

"I don't know, but I fancy that you won't find him amongst the guests."

Hillyard was a little startled by the answer, but he did not betray the least sign of surprise. He pursued his questions.

"You know whom I have in my mind?"

"I drew a bow at a venture," answered Sir Charles.

"Shall I name him?" asked Hillyard.

"I will," returned Sir Charles. "Mario Escobar."

Hillyard nodded. He took another pull at his whisky-and-soda. Then he lit a cigarette and leaned forward, with his elbows upon his knees; and all the while Sir Charles Hardiman, his body in a majestic repose, contemplated him placidly. Hardiman had this great advantage in any little matter of debate; he never wished to move. Place him in a chair, and he remained, singularly immobile.

"Since you were so quick to guess at once the reason of my question," continued Hillyard, "I can draw an inference. Mario Escobar has been at Rackham Park a good deal?"

Sir Charles Hardiman's smile broadened.

"Even now you don't express your inference," he retorted. "You mean that Mario Escobar has been at Rackham Park too much." He paused whilst he drew out his cigarette-case and selected a cigarette from it. "And I agree," he added. "Mario Escobar is too picturesque a person for these primitive days."

Hillyard was not sure what Sir Charles Hardiman precisely meant. But on the other hand he was anxious to ask no direct questions concerning Escobar. He sought to enter in by another gate.

"Primitive?" he said.

"Yes. We have become rather primitive, especially the women. They have lost a deal of self-consciousness. They exact less. They give more—oh, superbly more! It's the effect of war, of course. They have jumped down off their little pinnacles. Let me put it coarsely. They are saved from rape by the fighting man, and they know it. Consequently all men benefit and not least," Sir Charles lit his cigarette, "that beast of abomination, the professional manipulator of women, the man who lives by them and on them, who cajoles them first and blackmails them afterwards, who has the little attentions, the appealing voice, in fact all the tricks of his trade ready at his fingers' ends. However, Millie Splay's awake to the danger now."

"Danger!" Hillyard sharply exclaimed.

"Quite right. It's too strong a word. I take it back," Hardiman agreed at once. But he was not in the habit of using words wildly. He had said exactly what he meant to say, and having aroused the attention which he meant to arouse, he calmly withdrew the word. "I rubbed it into Chichester's thick head that Escobar was overmuch at Rackham Park, and in the end—it percolated."

Much the same account of Escobar, with this instance of Rackham Park omitted, was given to Hillyard by Commodore Graham on the Friday morning.

"He is the kind of man whom men loathe and women like. He runs about London, gets a foot in here and there. You know what London is, even now in the midst of this war, with its inability to be surprised, and its indifference to strange things. You might walk down Regent Street dressed up as a Cherokee Indian, feathers and tomahawk and all, and how many Cockneys would take the trouble to turn round and look at you twice? It was pretty easy for Escobar to slip about unnoticed."

Commodore Graham bent his head over the case of tubes which Hillyard had brought with him.

"We'll have a look-out kept for these things. There have been none of them in England up till now."

Martin Hillyard returned to the personality of Mario Escobar.

"Did you suspect him before?" he asked.

Commodore Graham pushed the cigarettes towards Hillyard.

"Scotland Yard has kept an eye on him. That sort of adventurer is always dangerous."

He rang the bell, and on Miss Cheyne's appearance called for what information the office had concerning Mario Escobar. Miss Cheyne returned with a book in which Escobar's dossier was included.

"Here he is," said Graham, and Hillyard, moving across to the bureau, followed Graham's forefinger across the written page. He was agent for the Compania de Navigacion del Sur d'España—a German firm on the black list, headquarters at Alicante. Escobar severed his connection with the company on the outbreak of war.

Graham raised his head to comment on the action.

"That, of course, was camouflage. But it checked suspicion for a time. Suspicion was first aroused," and he resumed reading again, "by his change of lodging. He lived in a small back bedroom in a boarding-house in Clarence Street, off Westbourne Grove, and concealed his address, having his letters addressed to his club, until February, 1915, upon which date he moved into a furnished flat in Maddox Street. Nothing further, however, happened to strengthen that suspicion until, in the autumn of that year, a letter signed Mario was intercepted by the censor. It was sent to a Diego Perez, the Director of a fruit company at Murcia, for Emma Grutsner."

"You sent me a telegram about her," exclaimed Hillyard, "in November."

Commodore Graham's forefinger travelled along the written lines and stopped at the number and distinguishing sign of the telegram, sent and received.

"Yes," continued Graham. "Here's your answer. 'Emma Grutzner is the governess in a Spanish family at Torrevieja, and she goes occasionally, once a month or so, to the house of Diego Perez in Murcia.'"

"Yes, yes! I routed that out," said Hillyard. "But I hadn't an idea that Mario Escobar was concerned in it."

"That wasn't mentioned?" asked the Commodore.

"No. I already knew, you see, of B45. If just a word had been added that it was Mario who was writing to Emma Grutzner we might have identified him months ago."

"Yes," answered Graham soothingly and with a proper compunction. He was not unused to other fiery suggestions from his subordinates that if only the reasons for his telegrams and the information on which his questions were based, were sent out with the questions themselves, better results in quicker time could be obtained. Telegrams, however, were going out and coming in all day; a whole array of cipherers and decipherers lived in different rookeries in London. Commodore Graham's activities embraced the high and the narrow seas, great Capitals and little tucked-away towns and desolate stretches of coast where the trade-winds blew. No doubt full explanations would have led in many cases to more satisfactory conclusions. But fuller explanations were out of all possibility. Even with questions fined down to the last succinct syllable the cables groaned. None of the objections were raised, however, by Commodore Graham. It was his business to keep men like Hillyard who were serving him well to their own considerable cost, in a good humour. Remorse was the line, not argument.

"What a pity! I am sorry," protested the Commodore. "It's my fault! There's nothing else to be said. I am to blame about it."

Martin Hillyard began to feel some compunction that he had ever suggested a fault in the composition of the telegram. But then, it was his business not to betray any such tenderness.

"If we could have in the future a little more information from London, it would save us a good deal of time," he said stonily. "Sometimes a surname is hurled at us, and will we find him, please, and cable home all details?"

"Yes, that is very wrong," the Commodore agreed. "We will have that changed." Then a bright idea appeared to occur to him. His face lighted up. "After all, in this instance the mistake hasn't done any real harm. For we have got our friend Mario Escobar now, and without these tubes and this letter from Berlin about the use of them and Jose Medina's account of the conversation in the next room we shouldn't have got him. The German governess wasn't enough. He's, after all, a neutral. Besides, there was nothing definite in his letter. But now——"

"Now you can deal with him?" asked Hillyard eagerly.

"To be sure," replied the Commodore. "We have no proof here to put him on his trial. But we have reasonable ground for believing him to be in communication with our enemies for the purpose of damaging us, and that's quite enough to lock him up until the end of the war."

He reached out his hand for the telephone and asked for a number.

"I am ringing up Scotland Yard," he said to Hillyard over the top of the instrument; and immediately Hillyard heard a tiny voice speaking as if summoned from another planet.

"Hallo!" cried Graham. "Is that you, A.C.? You remember Mario Escobar? Good. I have Hillyard here from the Mediterranean with a clear case. I'll come over and see you."

Mr. "A.C.", whose real name was Adrian Carruthers, thereupon took up the conversation at the other end of the line. The lines deepened upon the Commodore's forehead as he listened. Then he turned to Hillyard, and swore softly and whole-heartedly.

"Mario Escobar has vanished."

"But I saw him myself," Hillyard exclaimed. "I saw him in London."

"When?"

"On Monday afternoon."

Graham lifted the mouthpiece to his lips again.

"Wait a bit, A. C. Hillyard saw the man in London on Monday afternoon."

Again A.C. spoke at the other end from an office in Scotland Yard. Graham put down the instrument with a bang and hung up the receiver.

"He vanished yesterday. Could he have seen you?"

Hillyard shook his head.

"I think not."

"Oh, we'll get him, of course. He can't escape from the country. And we will get him pretty soon," Graham declared. He looked out of the window on to the river. "I wonder what in the world alarmed him, since it wasn't you?" he speculated slowly.

But both Scotland Yard and Commodore Graham were out of their reckoning for once. Mario Escobar was not alarmed at all. He had packed his bag, taken the tube to his terminus, bought his ticket and gone off in a train. Only no one had noticed him go; and that was all there was to it.

"It's a good race to leave alone, Miranda," said Dennis Brown. "But if you want to back something, I should put a trifle on Kinky Jane."

"Thank you, Dennis," Miranda answered absently. She was standing upon the lawn at Gatwick with her face towards the line of bookmakers upon the far side of the railings. These men were shouting at the full frenzy of their voices, in spite of the heat and the dust. The ring was crowded, and even the enclosure more than usually full.

"But you won't get any price," Harold Jupp continued, and he waved an indignant arm towards the bookmakers. "I never saw such a crowd of pinchers in my life."

"Thank you, Harold," Miranda replied politely. She was aware that he was advising her, but the nature of the advice did not reach her mind. She was staring steadily in front of her.

Dennis Brown and Harold Jupp looked at one another in alarm. They knew well that sibylline look on the face of Miranda Brown. She was awaiting the moment of inspiration. She was all wrapped up in expectation of it. At times she glanced at her race-card, whilst a thoughtful frown puckered her pretty forehead, as though the name of the winning filly might leap out in letters of gold.

Dennis shook his head dolefully. For the one thing sure and certain was that the fatal moment of inspiration would come to Miranda in time to allow her to reach the railings before the start. Suddenly a name uttered by an apoplectic gentleman in a voice breaking with fine passion reached her ears, with the odds attached to it of nine to one.

Miranda's face cleared of all its troubles.

"Oh, why didn't I think of that before?" she said in an extremity of self-reproach. She walked straight to the apoplectic gentleman, followed by the unhappy pair of scientific punters.

"Callow Girl is nine to one, isn't it?"

The apoplectic gentleman smiled winningly.

"To you, missie."

Miranda laughed.

"I'll have ten pounds on it," she said, and did not hear the gasp of her husband behind her. She made a note of the bet in her little pocket-book.

"That's ninety pounds, anyway," she said, turning to her companions. "They will just buy that simple little Callot frock with the embroidery."

Yes, racing was as easy as that to Miranda Brown. She wanted a simple little Callot frock which would cost ninety pounds, and Callow Girl was obviously marked out to win it for her.

"Then I shall be a Callot girl," she said gaily, and as neither of her companions enjoyed her witticism she stamped her small foot in vexation.

"Oh, how dull you both are!" she cried.

"Well, you see," Dennis rejoined, "we've had rather a bad day."

"So have I," returned Miranda indignantly. "Yet I keep up my spirits."

A look of blank amazement overspread the face of Dennis Brown. He gazed around as one who should say, "Did you ever see anything so amazing outside the Ark?"

Miranda corrected her remark with a laugh.

"Well, I mean I haven't won as much as I should have if I had backed winners." For she had really mastered the science of the race-course. She knew how to go racing. Her husband paid her losses and she kept her winnings.

Harold Jupp took her seriously by the arm.

"You ought to go into a home, Miranda," he advised. "You really ought. That little head was never meant for all this weighty thought."

Miranda walked across to the little stone terrace which looks down the course.

"Don't be foolish, Harold, but go and collect Colonel Luttrell if you can find him, whilst I see my filly win," she said. "Dennis has already gone to find the car and we propose to start immediately this race is over."

Miranda ascended the grass slope and saw the fillies canter down towards the starting post. From the chatter about her she gathered that the odds on Callow Girl had shortened. It was understood that a sum of money had been laid on her at the last moment. She was favourite before the flag was dropped and won by half a length. Miranda ran joyously down the slope.

"What did I tell you, Harold? Aren't I wonderful? And have you found Colonel Luttrell? You know Millie told us to look out for him?" she cried all in a breath.

Luttrell had written to Lady Splay to say that he would try to motor to Gatwick in time for the last races; and that he would look out for Jupp and Dennis Brown, whom he had already met earlier in the week at a dinner party given by Martin Hillyard.

"There's no sign of him," Harold Jupp answered.

There were two more races, but the party from Rackham Park did not wait for them. They drove over the flat country through Crawley and Horsham and came to the wooded roads between high banks where the foliage met overhead, and to the old stone bridges over quiet streams. Harold Jupp was home from Egypt, Dennis Brown from Salonika, and as the great downs, with their velvet forests, seen now over a thick hedge, now in an opening of branches like the frame of a locket, the marvel of the English countryside in summer paid them in full for their peril and endurance.

"I have a fortnight, Miranda," said Dennis, dropping a hand upon his wife's. "Think of it!"

"My dear, I have been thinking of nothing else for months," she said softly. Terrors there had been, nights and days of them, terrors there would be, but she had a fortnight now, perfect in its season, and in the meeting of old friends upon familiar ground—a miniature complete in beauty, like the glimpses of the downs seen through the openings amongst the boughs.

"Yes, a whole fortnight," she cried and laughed, and just for a second turned her head away, since just for a second the tears glistened in her eyes.

The car turned and twisted through the puzzle of the Petworth streets and mounted on to the Midhurst road. The three indefatigable race-goers found Lady Splay sitting with Martin Hillyard in the hall of Rackham Park.

"You had a good day, I hope," she said.

"It was wonderful," exclaimed Dennis Brown. "We didn't make any money except Miranda. But that didn't matter."

"All our horses were down the course," Harold Jupp explained. "They weren't running in their form at all"; and he added cheerfully: "But the war may be over before the winter, and then we'll go chasing and get it all back."

Millicent Splay rang for tea, just as Joan Whitworth came into the hall.

"You didn't see Colonel Luttrell then?" asked Lady Splay.

"No."

"He'll come down later then." She had an eye for Joan Whitworth as she spoke, but Joan was so utterly indifferent as to whether Colonel Luttrell would arrive or not that she could not stifle a sigh. She had gathered Luttrell into the party with some effort and now it seemed her effort was to be fruitless. Joan persisted in her mood of austere contempt for the foibles of the world. She was dressed in a gown of an indeterminate shade between drab and sage-green, which did its best to annul her. She had even come to sandals. There they were now sticking out beneath the abominable gown.

"She can't ruin her complexion," thought Millicent Splay. "That's one thing. But if she could, she would. Oh, I would love to smack her!"

Joan, quite unaware of Millie Splay's tingling fingers and indignant eyes, sat reading "Ferishtah's Fancies." Other girls might set their caps at the soldiers. Joan had got to be different. She had even dallied with the pacifists. Martin Hillyard had carried away so close a recollection of her on that afternoon when she had driven him through the golden sunset over Duncton Hill and of the brave words she had then spoken that he had to force himself to realise that this was indeed she.

Millicent Splay had three preoccupations that afternoon but none pressed upon her with so heavy a load of anxiety as her preoccupation concerning Joan Whitworth.

Martin crossed the room to Joan and sat upon the couch beside her.

"Didn't I see you in London, Miss Whitworth, on Monday afternoon?" he asked.

Joan met his gaze steadily.

"Did you? It was possible. I was in London on Monday. Where did you think you saw me?"

"Coming out of a picture gallery in Green Street."

Joan did not flinch, nor drop her eyes from his.

"Yes, you saw me," she replied. Then with a challenge in her voice she added distinctly, so that the words reached, as they were meant to reach, every one in that room. "I was with Mario Escobar."

The room suddenly grew still. Two years ago, Martin Hillyard reflected, Harold Jupp or Dennis would have chaffed her roundly about her conquest, and she would have retorted with good humour. Now, no one spoke, but a little sigh, a little movement of uneasiness came from Millie Splay. Joan did not take her eyes from Hillyard's face. But the blood mounted slowly over her throat and cheeks.

"Well?" she asked, and the note of challenge was a trifle more audible in her quiet voice. And since he was challenged, Hillyard answered:

"He is a German spy."

The words smote upon all in the room like a blow. Joan herself grew pale. Then she replied:

"People say that nowadays of every foreigner."

The moment of embarrassment was prolonged to a full minute—during which no one spoke. Then to the relief of every one, Sir Chichester Splay entered the hall. He had been sitting all day upon the Bench. He had to attend the Flower Show in Chichester during the next week. Really the life of a country notable was a dog's life.

"You are going to make a speech at Chichester, Sir Christopher?" Jupp inquired.

"Oh no, my boy," replied Sir Chichester. "Make a speech indeed! And in this weather! Nothing would induce me. Me for the back benches, as our cousins across the Atlantic would say."

He spoke pompously, yet with a certain gratification as though Harold Jupp had asked him to dignify the occasion with a speech.

"Have the evening papers not arrived yet?" he asked, looking with suspicious eyes on Dennis Brown.

"No, I am not sitting on them this time," said Dennis.

"And Colonel Luttrell?"

After the evening papers, Sir Chichester thought politely of his guests. Millie Splay replied with hesitation. While the others of the company were shaking off their embarrassment, she was sinking deeper into hers.

"Colonel Luttrell has not come yet. Nor—nor—the other guest who completes our party."

Her voice trailed off lamentably into a plea for kind treatment and gentleness. Here was Millie Splay's second preoccupation. As it was Sir Chichester's passion to see his name printed in the papers, so it was Millie's to gather in the personages of the moment under her roof. She had promised that this party should be just a small one of old friends with Luttrell as the only new-comer. But personages were difficult to come by at this date, since they were either deep in work or out of the country altogether. They had to be brought down by a snap shot, and very often the bird brought down turned out to be a remarkably inferior specimen of his class. Millie Splay had been tempted and had fallen; and she was not altogether easy about the quality of her bird, now on its descent to her feet.

"I didn't know any one else was coming," said Sir Chichester, who really didn't care how much Lady Splay gratified her passion, so long as he got full satisfaction for his.

"No, nor any one else," said Dennis Brown severely. "He is a stranger."

"To you," replied Millie Splay, showing fight.

Harold Jupp advanced and planted himself firmly before her.

"Do you know him yourself, Lady Splay?" he asked.

"But of course I do," the poor lady exclaimed. "How absurd of you, Harold, to ask such a question! I met him at a party when Joan and I were in London at the beginning of this week." She caught again at her fleeting courage. "So I invited him, and he's coming this afternoon. I shall send the motor to meet him in an hour from now. So there's an end of the matter."

Harold Jupp shook his head sagely.

"We must see that the plate is all locked up safely to-night."

"There! I knew it would be like this," cried Millie Splay, wringing her hands. She remembered, from a war correspondent's article, that to attack is the only successful defence. She turned on Jupp.

"I won't be bullied by you, Harold! He's a most charming person, with really nice manners," she emphasised her praise of the absent guest, "and if only you will study him whilst he is here—all of you, you will be greatly improved at the end of your visit."

Harold Jupp was quite unimpressed by Millie Splay's outburst. He remained severely in front of her, judge, prosecutor and jury all in one, and all relentlessly against her.

"And what is his name?"

Lady Splay looked down and looked up.

"Mr. Albany Todd," she said.

"I don't like it," said Harold Jupp.

"No," added Dennis Brown sadly from a corner. "We can't like it, Lady Splay."

Lady Splay turned with her most insinuating smile towards Brown.

"Oh, Dennis, do be nice and remember this isn't your house," she cried. "You can be so unpleasant if you find any one here you don't like. Mr. Albany Todd's quite a famous person."

Harold Jupp, of the inquiring mind, still stood looking down on Lady Splay without any softening of his face.

"What for?" he asked.

Lady Splay groaned in despair.

"Oh, I was sure you were going to ask that. You are so unpleasant." She put her hand to her forehead. "But I know quite well. Yes, I do." Her face suddenly cleared. "He is a conversationalist—that's it—a great conversationalist. He is the sort of man," she spoke as one repeating a lesson, "who would have been welcome at the breakfast table of Mr. Rogers."

"Rogers?" Harold Jupp asked sternly. "I don't know him."

"And probably never will, Harold, I am sorry to say," said Lady Splay triumphantly. "Mr. Rogers was in heaven many years ago." She suddenly changed her note and began to implore. "Oh, do be pleasant, you and Dennis!"

Harold Jupp's mouth began to twitch, but he composed it again, with an effort, to the stern lines befitting the occasion.

"I'll tell you what I think, Lady Splay," said he, pronouncing judgment. "Your new guest's a Plater."

The dreadful expected word was spoken. Lady Splay broke into appeals, denials, threats. "Oh, he isn't, he isn't!" She turned to her husband. "Chichester, exert your authority! He's not a Plater really. He's not right down the course. And even if he were, they've got to be polite to him."

Sir Chichester, however, was the last man who could be lured into the expression of a definite opinion.

"My dear, I never interfere in the arrangements of the house. You have your realm. I have mine. I am sure those papers are being kept in the servants' hall," and he left the room hurriedly.

"Oh, how mean men are!" cried Millie; and they all began to laugh.

Lady Splay saw a glimpse of hope in their laughter and became much more cheerful.

"As you are not racing, dear," she said to Joan, "he will be quite a pleasant companion for you."

Sir Chichester returned with the evening papers. Dennis and Miranda and Harold Jupp rose to go upstairs and change into flannels; and suddenly, a good hour before his time, Harper, the butler, announced:

"Mr. Albany Todd."

Mr. Albany Todd was a stout, consequential personage, and ovoid in appearance. Thin legs broadened out to very wide hips, and from the hips he curved in again to a bald and shiny head, which in its turn curved inwards to a high, narrow crown. Lady Splay casting a look of appeal towards her refractory young guests hurried forward to meet him.

"This is my husband." She presented him to the others. "I was going to send the motor-car to meet the seven o'clock train."

"Oh, thank you, Lady Splay," Mr. Albany Todd returned in a booming voice. "I have been staying not more than twenty miles from here, with a dear old friend, a rare and inestimable being, Lord Bilberry, and he was kind enough to send me in."

"What, old man Bilberry," cried Harold Jupp. "Isn't he balmy?"

"Balmy, sir?" Mr. Todd asked in surprise. "He takes the air every morning, if that is what you mean." He turned again to Lady Splay. "He keeps the most admirable table. You must know him, Lady Splay. I will see to it."

"Thank you," said Millie Splay humbly.

"Ah, muffins!" said Mr. Albany Todd with glistening eyes. He ate one and took another. "These are really as good as the muffins I ate at a wonderful week-end party a fortnight ago."

The chatter of the others ceased. The great conversationalist, it seemed, was off. Miranda, Dennis, Harold Jupp, Sir Chichester, even Joan looked up with expectation.

"Yes," said Lady Splay, encouraging him. She looked around at her guests. "Now you shall see," she seemed to say.

"How we laughed! What sprightly talk! The fine flavour of that party is quite incommunicable. Just dear old friends, you see, intimate, congenial friends."

Mr. Albany Todd stopped. It appeared that he needed a question to be put to him. Lady Splay dutifully put it.

"And where did this party take place, Mr. Albany Todd?"

Mr. Albany Todd smiled and dusted the crumbs from his knees.

"At the Earl of Wimborough's little place in the north. Do you know the Earl of Wimborough? No? You must, dear lady! I will see to it."

"Thank you," said Millie Splay.

Harold Jupp looked eagerly at the personage, and said, "I hope Wimborough won't go jumping this winter."

"Jumping!" cried Mr. Albany Todd turning indignantly. "I should think not indeed! Jumping! Why, he is seventy-three!"

He was utterly scandalised that any one should attribute the possibility of such wayward behaviour to the venerable Earl. In his agitation he ate another muffin. After all, if the nobleman did go jumping in the winter why should this young and horsey man presume to criticise him.

"Harold Jupp was drawing a distinction between flat racing and steeple-chasing, Mr. Albany Todd," Sir Chichester suavely explained.

"Oh, I see." Mr. Albany Todd was appeased. He turned a condescending face upon Joan Whitworth.

"And what are you reading, Miss Whitworth?"

"What ho!" interposed Harold Jupp.

Joan shot at him a withering glance.

"It wouldn't interest you." She smiled on Mr. Albany Todd. "It's Browning."

"Well, that's just where you are wrong," returned Jupp. "Browning's the only poet I can stick. There's a ripping thing of his I learnt at school."

"'I sprang to the saddle and Joris and he,
I galloped, Dirck galloped, we galloped all three.'"

"Oh," exclaimed Miranda eagerly, "a horse race!"

"Nothing of the sort, Miranda. I am thoroughly ashamed of you," said Harold in reproof. "It's 'How they Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix.'"

Here Joan intervened disdainfully.

"But that's not Browning!"

Lady Splay looked perplexed.

"Are you sure, Joan?"

Joan tossed her head.

"Of course, it's Browning all right," she explained, "but it's not Browning if you understand me."

The explanation left that company mystified. Harold Jupp shook his head mournfully at Joan, and tapped his forehead.

"Excessive study, Joan, has turned that little head. The moment I saw you in sandals I said to myself, 'Joan couldn't take the hill.'"

Joan wrinkled her nose, and made a grimace at him. What rejoinder she would have made no one was to know. For Mr. Albany Todd finding himself unduly neglected burst into the conversation with a complete irrelevance.

"I am so happy. I shot a stag last autumn."

Both Dennis Brown and Harold Jupp turned to the great conversationalist with real interest.

"How many stone?" asked Dennis.

"I used a rifle," replied Mr. Albany Todd coldly. He did not like to be made fun of; and suddenly a ripple of clear laughter broke deliciously from Joan.

Lady Splay looked agitatedly around for succour. Oh, what a mistake she had made in bringing Mr. Albany Todd into the midst of these ribald young people. And after all—she had to admit it ruefully, he was a bit of a Plater. Dennis Brown, however, hurried to the rescue. He came across the room to Joan, and sat down at her side.

"I haven't had a word with you, Joan."

"No," she answered.

"And how's the little book going on? Do tell me! I won't laugh, upon my word."

Joan herself tried not to. "Oh, pig, pig!" she exclaimed, but she got no further in her anathema for Miranda drew up a stool, and sat in admiration before her.

"Yes, do tell us," she pleaded. "It's all so wonderful."

Miranda, however, was never to hear. Mr. Albany Todd leaned forward with an upraised forefinger, and a smile of keen discernment.

"You are writing a book, Miss Whitworth," he said, as if he had discovered the truth by his own intuition, and expected her to deny the impeachment. "Ah, but you are! And I see that you can write one."

"Now, how?" asked Harold Jupp.

Mr. Albany Todd waved the question aside. "The moment I entered the hall, and saw Miss Whitworth, I said to myself, 'There's a book there!' Yes, I said that. I knew it! I know women."

Mr. Albany Todd closed his eyelids, and peeped out through the narrowest possible slits in the cunningest fashion. "Some experience you know. I am the last man to boast of it. A certain almost feminine sensibility—and there you have my secret. I read the character of women in their eyebrows. A woman's eyebrows. Oh, how loud they speak! I looked at Miss Whitworth's eyebrows, and I exclaimed, 'There is a book there—and I will read it!'"

Joan flamed into life. She clasped her hands together.

"Oh, will you?" The question was half wonder, half prayer.

No man could have shown a more charming condescension than did Mr. Albany Todd at this moment.

"Indeed, I will. I read one book a year—never more. A few sentences in bed in the morning, and a few sentences in bed at night. Yours shall be my book for 1923." He took a little notebook and a pencil from his pocket. "Now what title will it have?"

"'A Woman's Heart, and Who Broke It,'" replied Joan, blushing from her temples to her throat.

Miranda repeated the title in an ecstasy of admiration, and asked the world at large: "Isn't it all wonderful?"

"'And Who Broke It,'" quoted Mr. Albany Todd as he wrote the title down. He put his pocket-book away.

"The volume I am reading now——"

"Yes?" said Joan eagerly. With what master was she to find herself in company? She was not to know.

"——was given to me exquisitely bound by a very dear friend of mine, now alas! in precarious health!—the Marquis of Bridlington," said Mr. Albany Todd—an audible groan from Harold Jupp; an imploring glance from Millie Splay, and to her immense relief the butler ushered in Harry Luttrell. He was welcomed by Millie Splay, presented to Sir Chichester, and surrounded by his friends. He was a trifle leaner than of old, and there were lines now where before there had been none. His eyes, too, had the queer, worn and sunken look which was becoming familiar in the eyes of the young men on leave. Joan Whitworth watched him as he entered, carelessly—for perhaps a second. Then her book dropped from her hand upon the carpet—that book which she had so jealously read a few minutes back. Now it lay where it had fallen. She leaned forward, as though above all she wished to hear the sound of his voice. And when she heard it, she drew in a little breath. He was speaking and laughing with Sir Chichester, and the theme was nothing more important than Sir Chichester's Honorary Membership of the Senga Mess.

"Lucky fellow!" cried Sir Chichester. "No trouble for you to get into the papers, eh! Publicity waits on you like a valet."

"But that's just the kind of valet I can't afford in my profession," said Harry.

The conversation was all trivial and customary. But Joan Whitworth leaned forward with a light upon her face that had never yet burnt there. Colonel Luttrell was presented to Mr. Albany Todd, who was most kind and condescending. Joan looked suddenly down at her bilious frock, and the horror of her sandals was something she could hardly bear. They would turn to her next. Yes, they would turn to her! She looked desperately towards the great staircase with its broad, shallow steps which ran up round two sides of the hall. Millie Splay was actually beginning to turn to her, when Dennis Brown came unconsciously to her rescue.

"We looked out for you at Gatwick," he said.

"I only just reached the race course in time for the last race," said Harry Luttrell. "Luckily for me."

"Why luckily?" asked Harold Jupp in surprise.

"Because I backed the winner," replied Luttrell.

The indefatigable race-goers gathered about him a little closer; and Joan Whitworth rose noiselessly from her chair.

"Which horse won?" asked Harold Jupp.

"Loman!" Harold Jupp stared at Dennis Brown. Incredulity held them as in bonds.

"But he couldn't win!" they both cried in a breath.

"He did, you know, and at a long price."

"What on earth made you back him?" asked Dennis Brown.

"Well," Luttrell answered, "he was the only white horse in the race."

Miranda uttered a cry of pleasure. She recognised a brother. "That's an awfully good reason," she cried. But science fell with a crash. Dennis Brown took his "Form at a Glance" from his pocket, and sadly began to tear the pages across. Harold Jupp looked on at that act of sacrilege.

"It doesn't matter," he said, and offered his invariable consolation. "Flat racing's no use. We'll go jumping in the winter."

But Harold Jupp was never again to go jumping in the winter. Long before steeple chasing began that year, he was lying out on the flat land beyond the Somme, with a bullet through his heart.

Dennis Brown returned "Form at a Glance" to his pocket; and Millie Splay drew Harry Luttrell away from the group.

"I want to introduce you to Joan Whitworth," she said, and she turned to the chair in which Joan had been sitting a few moments ago.

It was empty.

"Why, where in the world has Joan gone to?" she exclaimed.

"She has fled," explained Jupp. "Joan saw his 'Form at a Glance,' without any book. She saw that he was incapable of the higher Life, and she has gone."

"Nonsense, Harold," cried Millicent Splay in vexation. She turned towards the stairs, and she gave a little gasp. A woman was standing on the second step from the floor. But it was not Joan, it was Stella Croyle.

"I thought you had such a bad headache," said Lady Splay, after a perceptible pause.

"It's better now, thank you," said Stella, and coming down the remaining steps, she advanced towards Harry.

"How do you do, Colonel Luttrell?" she asked.

For a moment he was taken aback. Then with the blood mounting in his face, he took a step forwards and shook hands with her easily.

"So you know one another!" said Lady Splay.

"We have known each other for a long while," returned Stella Croyle.

So that was why Stella Croyle had proposed herself for the week! Lady Splay had been a little surprised; so persistently had Stella avoided anything in the shape of a party. But this time Stella had definitely wished to come, and Millie Splay in her loyalty had not hesitated to welcome her. But she had been a little curious. Stella's visit, indeed, was the third, though the least, of her preoccupations. The Ball on the Thursday of next week at the Willoughby's! Well, Stella was never lacking in tact. That would arrange itself. But as Millie Splay looked at her, recognised her beauty, her eager advance to Harry Luttrell, and Harry Luttrell's embarrassment, she said to herself, for quite other reasons:

"If I had guessed why she wanted to come, nothing would have persuaded me to have her."

Millie Splay had more reason to repeat the words before the week was out.

"I hadn't an idea that we should find her here," said Hillyard. "Lady Splay told me so very clearly that Mrs. Croyle always timed her visits to avoid a party."

Hillyard was a little troubled lest he should be thought by his friend to have concurred in a plot to bring about this meeting.

"I suppose that Hardiman told her you were coming to Rackham Park. I haven't seen her until this moment, since I returned."

"That's all right, Martin," Luttrell answered.

The two men were alone in the hall. The tennis players had changed, and were out upon the court. Millie Splay had dragged Stella Croyle away with her to play croquet. Luttrell moved to a writing-table.

"You are going to join the tennis players," he said. Hillyard was already dressed for the game, and carried a racket in his hand. "I must write a letter, then I will come out and watch you."

"Right," said Martin, and he left his friend to his letter.

The hall was very still. A bee came buzzing in at the open window, made a tour of the flower-vases, and flew out again into the sunshine. From the lawn the cries of the tennis players, the calls of thrush and blackbird and dishwasher, were wafted in on waves of perfume from the roses. It was very pleasant and restful to Harry Luttrell after the sweat and labour of France. He sighed as he folded his letter and addressed it to a friend in the War Office.

A letter-box stood upon a table close to the staircase. He was carrying his letter over to it, when a girl came running lightly down the stairs and halted suddenly a step or two from the bottom. She stood very still where Stella Croyle had stood a few minutes ago, and like Stella, she looked over the balustrade at Harry Luttrell. Harry Luttrell had reached the letter-box when he caught sight of her, but he quite forgot to drop his letter through the slit. He stood transfixed with wonder and perplexity; wonder at her beauty; perplexity as to who she was.

Martin Hillyard had spoken to him of Joan Whitworth. By the delicious oval of her face, the deep blue of her eyes, the wealth of rippling bright hair, the soft bloom of colour on her cheeks, and her slim, boyish figure—the girl should rightly be she. But it couldn't be! No, it couldn't! This girl's lips were parted in a whimsical friendly smile; her eyes danced; she was buoyant with joy singing at her heart. Besides—besides——! Luttrell looked at her clothes. She wore a little white frock of chiffon and lace, as simple as could be, but even to a man's eyes it was that simplicity which is the last word of a good dressmaker. A huge rose of blue and silver at her waist was its only touch of colour. With it she wore a white, broad-brimmed hat of straw with a great blue bow and a few narrow streamers of blue ribbon floating jauntily, white stockings and shoes, cross-gartered round her slender ankles with shining ribbons. Was it she? Was it not? Was Martin Hillyard crazy or the whole world upside down?

"You must be Colonel Luttrell," his gracious vision exclaimed, with every appearance of surprise.

"I am," replied Luttrell. He was playing with his letter, half slipping it in, and then drawing it back from the box, and quite unaware of what he was doing.

"We had better introduce ourselves, I think. I am Joan Whitworth."

She held out her hand to him over the balustrade. He had but to reach up and take it. It was a cool hand, and a cordial one.

"Martin Hillyard has talked to me about you," he said.

"I like him," she replied. "He's a dear."

"He told me enough to make me frightened at the prospect of meeting you."

Joan leaned over the banister.

"But now that we have met, you aren't really frightened, are you?" she asked in so wistful a voice, and with a look so deeply pleading in her big blue eyes that no young man could have withstood her.

Harry Luttrell laughed.

"I am not. I am not a bit frightened. In fact I am almost bold enough to ask you a question."

"Yes, Colonel Luttrell?"

The invitation was clear enough. But the Colonel was suddenly aware of his audacity and faltered.

"Oh, do ask me, Colonel Luttrell!" she pleaded. The old-fashioned would have condemned Joan Whitworth as a minx at this moment, but would have softened the condemnation with a smile forced from them by her winning grace.

"Well, I will," replied Luttrell, and with great solemnity he asked, "How is Linda Spavinsky?"

Joan ran down the remaining steps, and dropped into a chair. A peal of laughter, silvery and clear, and joyous rang out from her mouth.

"Oh, she's not at all well to-day. I believe she's going. Her health was never very stable."

Then her mood changed altogether. The laughter died away, the very look of it faded from her face. She stood up and faced Harry Luttrell. In the depths of her eyes there appeared a sudden gravity, a certain wistfulness, almost a regret.

She spoke simply:

"Iram indeed is gone with all his rose,
And Jamshyd's seven-ringed cup—where, no one knows!
But still a ruby kindles in the vine,
And many a garden by the water blows."

She had the air of one saying good-bye to many pleasant follies which for long had borne her company—and saying good-bye with a sort of doubt whether that which was in store for her would bring a greater happiness.

Harry Luttrell had no answer, and no very distinct comprehension of her mood. But he was stirred by it. For a little while they looked at one another without any words. The air about them in that still hall vibrated with the emotions of violins. Joan Whitworth was the first to break the dangerous silence.

"I am afraid that up till now, what I have liked, I have liked tremendously, but I have not always liked it for very long. You will remember that in pity, won't you?" she said lightly.

Harry Luttrell was quick to catch her tone.

"I shall remember it with considerable apprehension if I am fortunate enough ever to get into your good books." His little speech ended with a gasp. The letter which he was holding carelessly in his fingers had almost slipped from them into the locked letter box.

Joan crossed to where he stood.

"That's all right," she said. "You can post your letter there. The box is cleared regularly."

"No doubt," Harry Luttrell returned. "But I am no longer sure that I am going to post it."

The letter to his friend at the War Office contained an earnest prayer that a peremptory telegram should be sent to him at Rackham Park, at an early hour on the next morning, commanding his return to London.

He looked up at Joan.

"You despise racing, don't you?"

"I am going to Gatwick to-morrow."

"You are!" he cried eagerly.

"Of course."

He stood poising the letter in the palm of his open hand. The thought of Stella Croyle bade him post it. The presence of Joan Whitworth, and he was so conscious of her, paralysed his arm. Some vague sense of the tumult within him passed out from him to her. An intuition seized upon her that that letter was in some way vital to her, in some way a menace to her. Any moment he might post it! Once posted he might let it go. She drew a little sharp breath. He was standing there, so still, so quiet and slow in his decision. It became necessary to her that words should be spoken. She spoke the first which rose to her lips.

"You are going to stay for the Willoughbys' ball, aren't you?"

Harry Luttrell smiled.

"But you despise dancing."

"I? I adore it!"

She smiled as she spoke, but she spoke with a queer shyness which took him off his feet. He slowly tore the letter across and again across and then into little pieces and carried them to the waste-paper basket.

The action brought home to her with a shock that there was a letter which she, in her turn, must write, must write and post in that glass letter-box, oh, without any hesitation or error, this very evening. She thought upon it with repugnance, but it had to be written and done with. It was the consequence of her own folly, her own vanity. Harry Luttrell returned to her but he did not remark the trouble in her face.

"When I left England," he said slowly, "people were dancing the tango. That is—one couple which knew the dance, was dancing it in the ball-room, and all the others were practising in the passage. That's done with, I suppose?"

"Quite," said Joan.

Harry Luttrell heaved a sigh.

"I should have liked to have practised with you in the passage," he said ruefully.

"Still, there are other dances," Joan Whitworth suggested. "The one-step?"

"That's going for a walk," said Harry Luttrell.

"In an unusual attitude," Joan added demurely. "Do you know the fox-trot?"

"A little."

"The twinkle step?"

"Not at all."

"I might teach you that," Joan suggested.

"Oh, do! Teach it me now! Then we'll dance it in the passage."

"But every one will be dancing it in the ball-room," Joan objected.

"That's why," said Harry Luttrell, and they both laughed.

Joan looked towards the gramophone in the corner of the room. She was tempted, but she must have that letter written first. She would dance with Harry Luttrell with an uneasy mind unless that letter were written and posted first.

"Will you put a record ready on the gramophone, whilst I write a note," she suggested. "Then I'll teach you. It's quite a short note."

Joan sat in her turn at the writing table. She wrote the first lines easily and quickly enough. But she came to explanations, and of explanations she had none to offer. She sat and framed a sentence and it would not do. Meanwhile the gramophone was open and ready, the record fitted on to the disc of green baize and her cavalier in impatient attendance. She must be quick. But the quicker she wanted to be, the more slowly her thoughts moved amongst awkward sentences which she must write. She dashed off in the end the standard phrase for such emergencies. "I will write to you to-morrow," addressed and stamped her letter and dropped it into the letter box. The letter fell in the glass box with the address uppermost. But Joan did not trouble about that, did not even notice it; a weight was off her mind.

"I am ready," she said, and a few seconds later the music of "The Long Trail" was wafted to the astonished ears of the tennis players in the garden. They paused in their game and then Dennis Brown crept to the window of the hall and looked cautiously in. He stood transfixed; then turned and beckoned furiously. The lawn-tennis players forsook their rackets, Lady Splay and Stella Croyle their croquet mallets. Dennis Brown led them by a back way up to the head of the broad stairs. Here a gallery ran along one side of the hall. Voices rose up to them from the floor above the music of the gramophone.

Joan's: "That's the twinkle."

Luttrell's: "It's pretty difficult."

"Try it again," said Joan. "Oh, that's ever so much better."

"I shall never dare to dance it with any one else," said Luttrell.

"I really don't mind very much about that," Joan responded dryly.

Millie Splay could hardly believe her ears. Cautiously she and her party advanced on tiptoe to the balustrade and looked down. Yes, there the pair of them were, now laughing, now in desperate earnest, practising the fox-trot to the music of the gramophone.

"Do I hold you right?" asked Harry.

"Well—I shan't break, you know," Joan answered demurely, and then with a little sigh, "That's better."

Under her breath Stella Croyle murmured passionately, "Oh, you minx!"

As the record ran out a storm of applause burst from the gallery.

"Oh, Joan, Joan," cried Harold Jupp, shaking his head reproachfully. "There's the poet kicked right across the room."

"Where?" asked Harry Luttrell, looking round for the book.

"Oh, it doesn't matter," said Joan impatiently. "It's only an old volume of Browning."

Cries of "Shame" broke indignantly from the race-goers, and Joan received them with imperturbable indifference. Harry Luttrell, however, went on his knees and discovering the book beneath a distant sofa, carefully dusted it.

"Did you ever read 'How they Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix'?" he asked.

The audience in the gallery waited in dead silence for Joan Whitworth's answer. It came unhesitatingly clear and in a voice of high enthusiasm.

"Isn't it the most wonderful poem he ever wrote?"

The gallery broke into screams, catcalls, hisses and protests against Joan's shameless recantation.

"It's Browning, of course, but it's not Browning at all, if you understand me," Dennis Brown exclaimed with every show of indignation; and the whole party trooped away again to their tennis and their croquet.

Harry Luttrell placed the book upon a table and turned to Joan.

"Now what would you like to do?" he asked.

Joan shrugged her shoulders.

"We might cut into the next tennis set," she said doubtfully.

"You could hardly play in those shoes," said Harry Luttrell.

Joan contemplated a heel of formidable height. Oh, where were the sandals of the higher Life?

"No, I suppose not. Of course, there's a—but it wouldn't probably interest you."

"Wouldn't it?" cried Harry Luttrell.

"Well, it's a maze. Millie Splay is rather proud of it. The hedges are centuries old." She turned innocent eyes on Harry Luttrell. "I don't know whether you are interested in old hedges."

It is to be feared that "minx" was the only right word for Joan Whitworth on this afternoon. Harry Luttrell expressed an intense enthusiasm for great box hedges.

"But they aren't box, they are yew," said Joan, stopping at once.

Harry Luttrell's enthusiasm for yew hedges, however, was even greater and more engrossing than his enthusiasm for box ones. A pagoda perched upon a bank overlooked the maze and a narrow steep path led down into it between the hedges. Joan left it to her soldier to find the way. There was a stone pedestal with a small lead figure perched upon the top of it in the small clear space in the middle. But Harry Luttrell took a deal of time in reaching it. If, however, their progress was slow, with many false turnings and sudden stops against solid walls of hedge, it was not so with their acquaintanceship; each turn in the path brought them on by a new stage. They wandered in the dawn of the world.

"Suppose that I had never come to Rackham Park!" said Harry Luttrell, suddenly turning at the end of a blind alley. "I almost didn't come. I might have altogether missed knowing you."

The terrible thought smote them both. What risks people ran to be sure. They might never have met. They might have never known what it was to meet. They might have lived benighted, not knowing what lovely spirit had passed them by. They looked at one another with despairing eyes. Then a happy thought occurred to Joan.

"But, after all, you did come," she exclaimed.

Harry Luttrell drew a breath. He was relieved of a great oppression.

"Why, yes," he answered in wonderment. "So I did!"

They retraced their steps. As the sun drew towards its late setting, by an innocent suggestion from Joan here, a little question there, Harry Luttrell was manoeuvred towards the centre of the maze. Suddenly he stopped with a finger on the lips. A voice reached to them from the innermost recess—a voice which intoned, a voice which was oracular.

"What's that?" he asked in a whisper.

Joan shook her head.

"I haven't an idea."

As yet they could hear no words. Words were flung from wall to wall of the centre space and kept imprisoned there. It seemed that the presiding genius of the maze was uttering his invocation as the sun went down. Joan and Harry Luttrell crept stealthily nearer, Harry now openly guided by a light touch upon his arm as the paths twisted. Words—amazing words—became distinctly audible; and a familiar voice. They came to the last screen of hedge and peered through at a spot where the twigs were thin. In the very middle of the clear space stood Sir Chichester Splay, one hand leaning upon the pedestal, the other hidden in his bosom, in the very attitude of the orator; and to the silent spaces of the maze thus he made his address:

"Ladies and gentlemen! When I entered the tent this afternoon and took my seat upon the platform, nothing was further from my thoughts than that I should hear myself proposing a vote of thanks to our indefatigable chairman!"

Sir Chichester was getting ready for the Chichester Flower Show, at which, certainly, he was not going to make a speech. Oh dear, no! He knew better than that.

"In this marvellous collection of flowers, ladies and gentlemen, we can read, if so we will, a singular instance of co-ordination and organisation—the Empire's great needs to-day——"

Harry Luttrell and Joan stifled their laughter and stole away out of hearing.

"We won't breathe a word of it," said Joan.

"No," said Harry.

They had a little secret now between them—that wonderful link—a little secret; and to be sure they made the most of it. They could look across the dinner-table at one another with a smile in which no one else could have a share. If Sir Chichester spoke, it would be just to kindle that swift glance in lovers' eyes from which the heart takes fire. Love-making went at a gallop in nineteen hundred and sixteen; it jumped the barriers; it danced to a lively and violent tune. Maidens, as Sir Charles Hardiman had pronounced, had become more primeval. Insecurity had dropped them down upon the bed-rock elemental truths. Men were for women, women for men, especially for those men who went out with a cheery song in their mouths to save them from the hideous destiny of women in ravaged lands. The soldier was here to-day on leave, and God alone knew where he would be to-morrow, and whether alive, or perhaps a crippled thing like a child!

Joan Whitworth and Harry Luttrell had been touched by the swift magic of those days; he, when he had first seen her in the shining armour of her youth upon the steps of the stairs; she, when Harry had first entered the hall and spoken his few commonplace words of greeting. This was the hour for them, the hour at the well with the desert behind them and the desert in front, the hour within the measure of which was to be forced the essence of many days. When they returned to the hall they found most of the small party gathered there before going up to dress for dinner; and there was that in the faces of the pair which betrayed them. Hillyard looked quickly round the hall, as a qualm of pity for Stella Croyle seized him. But he could not see her. "Thank Heaven she has already gone up to dress," he said to himself. A marriage between Joan Whitworth and the Harry Luttrell of to-day, the man freed now from the great obsession of his life and trained now to the traditional paths, was a fitting thing, a thing to be welcomed. Hillyard readily acknowledged it. But he had more insight into the troubled soul of Stella Croyle than any one else in that company.

"No one's bothering about her," he reflected. "She came here to set up her last fight to win back Harry. She is now putting on her armour for it. And she hasn't a chance—no, not one!"

For Harry's sake he was glad. But he was a creator of plays; and his training led him to seek to understand, and to understand with the sympathy of his emotions, the points of view of others who might stand in a contrast or a relation. He walked up the stairs with a heart full of pity when Millicent Splay caught him up.

"What did I tell you?" she said, brimful with delight. "Just look at Joan! Is there a girl anywhere who can match her?"

Martin looked down over the balustrade at Joan in the hall below.

"No," he said slowly. "Not one whom I have ever seen."

The little note of melancholy in his voice moved Millie Splay. She was all kindness in that moment of her triumph. She turned to Martin Hillyard in commiseration. "Oh, don't tell me that you are in love with her too! I should be so sorry."

"No, I am not," Martin Hillyard hastened to reassure her, "not one bit."

The commiseration died on the instant in Millicent Splay.

"Well, really I don't see why you shouldn't be," she said coldly. "You will go a long way before you find any one to equal her."

Her whole attitude demanded of him an explanation of how he dared not to be in love with her darling.

"A very long way," Martin Hillyard agreed humbly. "All the way probably."

Lady Splay was mollified, and went on to her room. Down in the hall, Harry Luttrell turned to Joan.

"This is going to be a wonderful week for me."

"I am very glad," answered Joan, and they went up the stairs side by side.

"I have put out the blue dress with the silver underskirt, madam," said Jenny Prask, knowing well that nothing in Stella Croyle's wardrobe set off so well her dark and fragile beauty.

"Very well, Jenny."

Stella Croyle answered listlessly. She was discouraged by her experience of that afternoon. She had come to Rackham Park, certain of one factor upon her side, but very certain of that. She would find no competitor, and lo! the invincible competitor, youth, had put on armour against her! Stella looked in the mirror. She was thirty, and in the circle within which she moved, thirty meant climbing reluctantly on to the shelf.

"Don't you think, Jenny, the blue frock makes me look old?"

Jenny Prask laughed scornfully.

"Old, madam! You! Just fancy!"

Stella Croyle, living much alone, had made a companion of her maid. There was nothing of Mrs. Croyle's history which Jenny Prask did not know, and very few of her hopes and sorrows were hidden from her.

"My gracious me, madam! There will be nobody to hold a candle to you here!" she said, with a sniff, as she helped Stella to undress.

Stella looked in the glass. Certainly there was not a line upon the smoothness of her cheeks; her dark hair had lost none of its gloss. She took her features one by one, and found no trace of change. Nor, indeed, scrutinised in that way did Stella show any change. It was when you saw her across a room that you recognised that girlhood had gone, and that there was a woman in the full ripeness of her beauty.

"Yes," she said, and her listlessness began to disappear. She turned away from the mirror. "Come, Jenny!" she cried, with a hopeful smile. She was saying to herself, "I have still a chance."

Jenny rattled on while she assisted her mistress. Stella's face changed with her mood, more than most faces. Disappointment and fatigue aged her beyond due measure. Jenny Prask was determined that she could go down to dinner to-night looking her youngest and best.

"I went for a walk this evening with Mr. Marvin. He's Colonel Luttrell's soldier-servant, and quite enthusiastic, he was, madam."

"Was he, Jenny?"

"Quite! The men in his company loved him—a captain he was then. He always looked after their dinner. A bit strict, too, but they don't mind that."

Jenny was busy with Stella Croyle's hair; and the result satisfied her.

"There won't be anybody else to-night, madam," she said.

"Won't there, Jenny?" said Mrs. Croyle, incredulously. "There'll be Miss Whitworth."

Jenny Prask sniffed disdainfully.

"Miss Whitworth! A fair sight I call her, madam, if I may say so. I never did see such clothes! And how she keeps a maid for more than a week beats me altogether. What I say, madam, is those who button in front when they should hook behind are a fair washout."

Stella laughed.

"I'm afraid that you'll find, Jenny, that Miss Whitworth will hook behind to-night."

Jenny went on unaffected by the rejoinder. She had her little item of news to contribute to the contentment of her mistress.

"Besides, Miss Whitworth is in love with the foreign gentleman. Oh, madam, if you turn as sharp as that, I can't but pull your hair."

"Which foreigner?"

"That Mario Escobar." Jenny looked over Stella's head and into the reflection of her eyes upon the mirror. "I don't hold with foreigners myself, madam. A little ridiculous they always seem to me, with their chatter and what not."

"And you believe Miss Whitworth's in love with him."

"Outrageous, Mr. Harper says. Quite the talk of the servants' hall, it is. Why, even this afternoon she wrote him a letter. Mr. Harper showed it me after he took it out of the letter-box to post it. 'That's her 'and,' says he—and there it was, Mario Escobar, Esquire, the Golden Sun Hotel, Midhurst——"

"Midhurst?" cried Stella with a start. She looked eagerly at the reflection of Jenny Prask. "Mr. Escobar is staying in an hotel at Midhurst?"

"Yes, madam."

"And Miss Whitworth wrote to him there this afternoon?"

"It's gospel truth, madam. May it be my last dying word, if it isn't!" said Jenny Prask.

The blood mounted into Stella Croyle's face. Since that was true—and she did not doubt Jenny Prask for a moment—Jenny would have given anything she had to save her mistress trouble, and Stella knew it. Since it was true, then, that Mario Escobar was staying hidden away in a country hotel five miles off, and that Joan was writing to him, why, after all, she had no rival.

Her spirits rose with a bound. She had a week, a whole week, in the company of Harry Luttrell; and what might she not do in a week if she used her wits and used her beauty! Stella Croyle ran down the stairs like a girl.

Jenny Prask shut the door, and, opening a wardrobe, took from a high shelf Mrs. Croyle's dressing-bag. She opened it, and from one of the fittings she lifted out a bottle. The bottle was quite full of a white, colourless liquid. Jenny Prask nodded to herself and carefully put the bottle back. There was very little she did not know about the proceedings of her mistress. Then she went out of the room into the gallery, and peeped down to watch the other guests assemble. She saw Miranda Brown, Stella, Sir Chichester Splay, Dennis and Harry Luttrell come from their different rooms and gather in the hall below. From a passage behind her, a girl, butterfly-bright, flashed out and danced joyously down the stairs. A new-comer, thought Jenny, with a pang of alarm for her mistress! But she heard the new-comer speak, and heard her spoken to. It was Joan Whitworth.

"Oh!" Jenny Prask gasped.

Undoubtedly Joan "hooked behind" to-night. What had come over her? Jenny asked. Her quick mind realised that Mario Escobar was not answerable for the change since Mario Escobar was miles away at Midhurst. Besides, according to Mr. Harper, this flirtation with Escobar had been going on a year and more.

Jenny Prask looked from Joan to Harry Luttrell. She saw them drawn to one another across the hall and move into the dining-room side by side. She turned back with a little moan of disappointment into Stella Croyle's bedroom; and whilst she tidied it, more than once she stopped to wring her hands.

Stella Croyle, however, kept her good spirits through the evening. For after dinner Harry Luttrell, of his own will, came straight to her in the drawing-room.

"Oh, Wub," she said in a whisper as she drew her skirt aside to make room for him upon the couch. "Oh, Wub, what years it is since I have seen you."

When the old nickname fell upon Harry's ears, he looked quickly about him to see where Joan Whitworth sat. But she was at the other end of the room.

"Yes, it is a long time."

"Stockholm!" said Stella, dwelling upon the name. She lowered her voice. "Wub, I suffered terribly after you went away. Oh, it wasn't a good time. No, it wasn't!"

"Stella, I am very sorry," he said gently. He knew himself this day the glories and the pangs of love. He was sunk ocean-deep one moment in the sense of his unworthiness, the next he knocked his head against the stars on the soaring billow of his pride. He could not but feel for Stella, who had passed through the same furnace. He could not but grieve that the wondrous book of which he was racing through the first pages had been closed for her by him. Might she not open it again, some time, with another at her side?

"Wub, tell me what you have been doing all these years," she said.

He began the tale of them in the short, reluctant, colloquial phrases which the English use to strip their achievements of any romantic semblance until Millicent Splay sailed across the room and claimed him for a table of bridge.

"He will be safer there," she said to herself.

"Yes, but she had to take him away," Stella's thoughts responded. She was dangerous then in Millie Splay's judgment. The sweet flattery set Stella smiling. She went up to her room rejoicing that she had chosen that week to visit Rackham Park. She was playing a losing game, but she did not know it.

Thus the very spirit of summer seemed to inform the gathering. Saturday brought up no clouds to darken the clear sky. Harold Jupp and Dennis Brown actually scored four nice wins at Gatwick on horses which, to celebrate the week, miraculously ran to form. Miranda under these conditions would have inevitably lost, but by another stroke of fortune no horse running had any special blemish, name, colour or trick calculated to inspire her. Sir Chichester was happy too, for he saw a lady reporter write down his name in her notebook. So was Mr. Albany Todd. For he met the Earl of Eltringham, with whom he had a passing acquaintance; and his lordship, being complimented upon his gardens, of which Country Life had published an account, was moved to say in the friendliest manner: "You must propose yourself for a week-end, Mr. Todd, and see them."

As for Joan and Harry Luttrell, it mattered little where they were, so that they were together. They walked in their own magical garden.

It fell to Martin Hillyard to look after Stella Croyle, and the task was not difficult. She kept her eyes blindfold to what she did not wish to see. She had a chance, she said to herself, recollecting her talk with Harry last night, and the news of Joan which Jenny Prask had given to her. She had a chance, if she walked delicately.

"Old associations—give them opportunity, and they renew their strength," she thought. "Harry is afraid of them—that's all."

On the Monday evening Jenny Prask brought a fresh piece of gossip which strengthened her hopes.

"Miss Whitworth had a letter from him this morning," said Jenny. "She wouldn't open it at the breakfast-table, Mr. Harper says. Quite upset she was, he says. She took it upstairs to her room just as it was."

"It might have been from some one else," answered Stella.

"Oh, no, madam," replied Jenny. "It had the Midhurst postmark, and Mr. Harper knows his handwriting besides. Mr. Harper's very observant."

"He seems to be," said Stella.

"Miss Whitworth answered the letter at once, and took it out to the village and posted it with her own hands," Jenny continued.

"Are you sure?" cried Mrs. Croyle.

"I saw her go with my own eyes, I did. She went in her own little runabout, and was back in a jiffy, with a sort of 'There-I've-done-it!' look about her. Oh, there's something going on there, madam—take my word for it! She's a deep one, Miss Whitworth is, and no mistake. Will you wear the smoke-grey to-night, madam? I am keeping the pink for the ball on Thursday."

Stella allowed a moment or two to pass before she answered.

"I shan't go to the Willoughbys' ball, Jenny."

Jenny Prask stared in dismay.

"You won't, madam!"

"No, Jenny. But I want you to be careful not to mention it to any one. I shall dress as if I was going, but at the last moment I shall plead a headache and stay behind."

"Very well, madam," said Jenny. But it seemed to her that Stella was throwing down her arms. Stella, however, had understood, upon hearing of the invitation for Lady Splay's party, that she could do nothing else. The Willoughbys were strict folk. Mrs. Croyle could hardly hope to go without some rumour of her history coming afterwards to the ears of that family; and the family would hold her presence as a reproach against Millie Splay. Stella had herself proposed her plan to Millie, and she noted the relief with which it was received.

"You will be careful not to mention it to a soul, Jenny," Stella insisted.

"My goodness me, madam, I never talk," replied Jenny. "I keep my ears open and let the others do that."

"I know, Jenny," said Stella, with a smile. "I can't imagine what I should do without you."

"And you never will, madam, unless it's your own wish and doin'," said Jenny heartily. "I have talked it over with Brown"—Brown was Mrs. Croyle's chauffeur—"and he's quite willin' that I should go on with you after we are married."

"Then, that's all right," said Stella.

Many a one looking backwards upon some terrible and unexpected tragedy will have noticed with what care the great dramaturgist so wove his play that every little unheeded event in the days before helped directly to create the final catastrophe. It happened on this evening that Stella went downstairs earlier than the other guests, and in going into the library in search of an evening paper, found Sir Chichester standing by the telephone instrument.

"Am I in your way?" she asked.

"Not a bit, Stella," he answered. "In fact, you might help me by looking up the number I want." He raised the instrument, and playing with the receiver as he stood erect, remarked, "Although I am happy to think that I shall not be called upon to deliver any observations on the occasion of the Chichester flower show next Thursday, I may as well ask one of the newspapers if their local correspondent would give the ceremony some little attention."

Stella Croyle took up the telephone book.

"Which newspaper is it to be, Sir Chichester?"

"The Harpoon, I think. Yes, I am sure. The Harpoon."

Stella Croyle looked up the number and read out:

"Gerrard, one, six, two, double three."

Sir Chichester accordingly called upon the trunk line and gave the number.

"You will ring me up? Thank you," he said, and replacing the receiver, stood in anxious expectancy.

"I thought that your favourite paper was the Daily Flashlight?" Stella observed.

"That's quite true, Stella. It was," Sir Chichester explained naïvely. "But I have noticed lately a regrettable tendency to indifference on the part of the Flashlight. The management is usually too occupied to converse with me when I ring it up. On the other hand, I am new to the Harpoon. Hallo! Hallo! This is Sir Christopher Splay speaking," and he delivered his message. "Thank you very much," said Sir Chichester as he hung up the receiver. "Really most courteous people. Yes, most courteous. What is their number, Stella? I must remember it."

Stella read it out again.

"Gerrard, one, six, two, double three," and thus she, too, committed the number to memory.

The library at Rackham Park was a small, oblong room, with a big window upon the garden. It opened into the hall on the one side and into the dining-room on the other, and in one corner the telephone was installed. At half-past eight on the night of the dance at Harrel, this room was empty and in darkness. But a second afterwards the door from the hall was opened, and Joan stood in the doorway, the light shimmering upon her satin cloak and the silver embroidery of her frock. She cast an anxious look behind her and up the staircase. It seemed as if some movement at the angle made by the stairs and the gallery caught her eye, for she stepped back for a clearer view, and listened with a peculiar intentness. She saw nothing, however, and heard nothing. She entered the library swiftly and closed the door behind her, so that the room fell once more upon darkness save for a thread of gold at the bottom of the other door behind which the men of the party were still sitting over their wine. She crossed the room towards the window, stepping cautiously to avoid the furniture. She was quite invisible. But for a tiny rustle of the lace flounces on her dress one would have sworn the room was empty. But when she was half-way across a sudden burst of laughter from the dining-room brought her to a stop with her hand upon her heart and a little sob not altogether stifled in her throat. It meant so much to her that the desperate adventure of this night should be carried through! If all went well, as it must—oh, as it surely must!—by midnight she would be free of her terrors and distress.

The laughter in the dining room died down. Joan stole forward again. She drew away the heavy curtains from the long window, and the moonlight, clear and bright like silver, poured into the room and clothed her in its soft radiance. She drew back the bolts at the top and bottom of the glass door and turned the key in the lock. She touched the glass and the door swung open upon the garden, easily, noiselessly. She drew it close again and leaving it so, raised her hands to the curtains at the side. As she began carefully to draw them together, so that the rings should not rattle on the pole, the door from the hall was softly and quickly opened, and the switch of the electric lights by the side of the door pressed down. The room leapt into light.

Joan swung round, her face grown white, her eyes burning with fire. She saw only Jenny Prask.

"I hope I don't intrude, miss," said Jenny respectfully. "I came to find a book."

The blood flowed back into Joan's cheeks.

"Certainly, Jenny, take what you like," said Joan, and she draped the curtains across the window.

"Thank you, miss."

Jenny chose a book from the case upon the table and without a glance at Joan or at the window, went out of the room again. Joan watched her go. After all, what had Jenny seen? A girl whose home was there, drawing the curtains close. That was all. Joan shook her anxiety off. Jenny had left the door of the library open and some one came running down the stairs whistling as she ran. Miranda Brown dashed into the room struggling with a pair of gloves.

"Oh, how I hate gloves in this weather!" she cried. "Well, here I am, Joan. You wanted to speak to me before the others had finished powdering their noses. What is it?"

"I want you to help me."

"Of course I will," Miranda answered cheerily. "How?"

Joan closed the door and returned to Miranda, who, having drawn the gloves over her arm, was now struggling with the buttons.

"I want you, when we reach Harrel——"

"Yes."

"To lend me your motor-car for an hour."

Miranda turned in amazement towards her friend. But one glance at her face showed that the prayer was made in desperate earnest. Miranda Brown caught her friend by the arm.

"Joan!"

"Yes," Joan Whitworth answered, nodding her head miserably. "That's the help I want and I want it dreadfully. Just for an hour—no more."

"Joan, my dear—what's the matter?" asked Miranda gazing into Joan Whitworth's troubled face.

"I don't want you to ask me," the girl answered. "I want you to help me straight off without any questions. Otherwise——" and Joan's voice shook and broke, "otherwise—oh, I don't know what will happen to me!"

Miranda put her arm round Joan Whitworth's waist. "Joan! You are in real trouble!"

"For the first time!" said Joan.

"Can't I——?"

"No," Joan interrupted. "There's only the one way, Miranda."

She sat down upon a couch at Miranda's side and feverishly caught her hand. "Do help me! You can't tell what it means to me!... And I should hate telling you! Oh, I have been such a fool!"

Joan's face was quivering, and so deep a compunction was audible in her voice, so earnest a prayer was to be read in her troubled eyes, that Miranda's doubt and anxiety were doubled.

"I don't know what I shall do, if you don't help me," Joan said miserably as she let go of Miranda. Her hands fluttered helplessly in the air. "No, I don't know!"

Miranda was thoroughly disturbed. The contrast between the Joan she had known until this week, good-humoured, a little aloof, contented with herself and her ambitions, placid, self-contained, and this lovely girl, troubled to the heart's core, with her beseeching eyes and trembling lips touched her poignantly, meltingly.

"Oh, Joan, I don't like it!" she whispered. "What mad thing have you done?"

"Nothing that can't be put right! Nothing! Nothing!" Joan caught eagerly at the argument. "Oh, I was a fool! But if you'll only help me to-night, I am sure everything will be arranged."

The words were bold enough, but the girl's voice trailed off into a low, unsteady whisper, as terror at the rash plan which she had made and must now carry through caught at her heart. "Oh, Miranda, do be kind!"

"When do you want the car?" asked Miranda.

"Immediately after we get to Harrel."

"Joan!"

Miranda herself was growing frightened. She stood torn with indecision. Joan's distress pleaded on the one side, dread of some tragic mystery upon the other. For the first time in her life Joan was in some desperate crisis of destiny. Her feet and hands twitched as though she were bound fast in the coils of a net she could not break. What wisdom of experience could she bring to help her to escape? On what wild and hopeless venture might she not be set?

"Yes, yes," Joan urged eagerly. "I have thought it all out. I want you to tell your chauffeur privately to return along the avenue after he has set you down. There's a road on the right a few yards down. If he will turn into that and wait behind the big clump of rhododendrons I will join him immediately."

"But it will be noticed that you have gone. People will ask for you," Miranda objected.

"No, I shall be back again within the hour. There will be a crowd of people. And lots won't imagine that I should ever come to the dance at all." Even at that moment a little smile played about the lips. "And if the ball had been a week ago, I shouldn't have gone, should I? I should still be wearing sandals," she explained, as she looked down at the buckles of her trim satin slippers, "and haughtily wishing you all good night in the hall here. No, it will be easy enough. I shall just shake hands with Mrs. Willoughby, pass on with the rest of our party into the ball-room and then slip out by the corridor at the side of the park."

"It's dangerous, Joan!" said Miranda.

"Oh, I know, but——" Joan rose suddenly with her eyes upon the door. "The others are coming. Miranda, will you help me? I would have driven over to Harrel in my own little car. But it's open and I should have got blown about until everybody would have begun asking why in the world I used it. Oh, Miranda, quick!"

Her ears had heard the voices already in the hall. Miranda heard them too. In a moment the door would be thrown open. She must make up her mind now.

"Very well. The first turning to the right down the avenue and behind the rhododendrons. I'll tell the chauffeur."

"And no one else! Not even Dennis!"

"Joan!"

"No, not even Dennis! Promise me!"

Millie Splay was heard to be inquiring for them both.

"Very well. I promise!"

"Oh, thank you! Thank you."

The door from the hall was opened upon that cry of gratitude and Millie Splay looked in.

"Oh, there you are." A movement of chairs became audible in the dining-room. "And those men are still sitting over their miserable cigars."

"They are coming," said Joan, and the next moment the dining-room door was thrown open and Sir Chichester with his guests trooped out from it.

"Now then, you girls, we ought to be off," he cried as if he had been waiting with his coat on for half an hour. "This is none of your London dances. We are in the country. You won't any of you get any partners if you don't hurry."

"Well, I like that!" returned Millie Splay. "Here we all are, absolutely waiting for you!"

Mr. Albany Todd approached Joan.

"You will keep a dance for me?"

"Of course. The third before supper," answered Joan.

Already Sir Chichester was putting on his coat in the hall.

"Come on! Come on!" he cried impatiently, and then in quite another tone, "Oh!"

The evening papers had arrived late that evening. They now lay neatly folded on the hall table. Sir Chichester pounced upon them. The throbbing motor-cars at the door, the gay figures of his guests were all forgotten. He plumped down upon a couch.

"There!" cried Millie Splay in despair. "Now we can all sit down for half an hour."

"Nonsense, my dear, nonsense! I just want to see whether there is any report of my little speech at the Flower Show yesterday." He turned over the leaves. "Not a word apparently, here! And yet it was an occasion of some importance. I can't understand these fellows."

He tossed the paper aside and took up another. "Just a second, dear!"

Millie Splay looked around at her guests with much the same expression of helpless wonderment which was so often to be seen on the face of Dennis Brown, when Miranda went racing.

"It's the limit!" she declared.

There were two, however, of the party, who were not at all distressed by Sir Chichester's procrastination. When the others streamed into the hall, Joan lingered behind, sedulously buttoning her gloves which were buttoned before; and Harry Luttrell returned to assist her. The door was three-quarters closed. From the hall no one could see them.

"You are going to dance with me in the passage," he said.

Joan smiled at him and nodded. Now that Miranda had given way, Joan's spirits had revived. The colour was bright in her cheeks, her eyes were tender.

"Yes, but not at once."

"Why?"

"I'll finish my duty dances first," said Joan in a low voice. She did not take her eyes from his face. She let him read, she meant him to read, in her eyes what lay so close at her heart. Harry Luttrell read without an error, the print was so large, the type so clear. He took a step nearer to her.

"Joan!" he whispered; and at this, his first use of her Christian name, her face flowered like a rose.

"Thank you!" she said softly. "Oh, thank you!"

Harry Luttrell looked over his shoulder. They had the room to themselves, so long as they did not raise their voices.

"Joan," he began with a little falter in his voice. Could he have pleaded better in a thousand fine speeches, he who had seen his men wither about him on the Somme, than by that little timorous quaver in his voice? "Joan, I have something to ask of you to-night. I meant to ask it during a dance, when you couldn't run away. But I am going to ask it now."

Joan drew back sharply.

"No! Please wait!" and as she saw his face cloud, she hurried on. "Oh, don't be hurt! You misunderstand. How you misunderstand! Take me in to supper to-night, will you? And then you shall talk to me, and I'll listen." Her voice rose like clear sweet music in a lilt of joy. "I'll listen with all my heart, my hands openly in yours if you will, so that all may see and know my pride!"

"Joan!" he whispered.

"But not now! Not till then!"

Harry Luttrell did not consider what scruple in the girl's conscience held him off. The delay did not trouble him at all. She stood before him, radiant in her beauty, her happiness like an aura about her.

"Joan," he whispered again, and—how it happened who shall say?—in a second she was within his arms, her heart throbbing against his; her hands stole about his shoulders; their lips were pressed together.

"Harry! Oh, Harry!" she murmured. Then very gently she pushed him from her. She shook her head with a wistful little smile.

"I didn't mean you to do that," she said in self-reproach, "until after supper."

In the hall Sir Chichester threw down the last of the newspapers in a rage. "Not a word! Not one single miserable little word! I don't ask much, goodness knows, but——" and his voice went up in an angry incredulity. "Not one word! And I thought the Harpoon was such a good paper too!"

Sir Chichester sprang to his feet. He glanced at his guests. He turned upon his wife.

"God bless my soul, Millie, what are we waiting for? I'll tell you girls what it is. Unless we get off at once, we had better not go at all. Where's Joan? Where's Luttrell?"

"Here we are!" cried Luttrell from the library, and in a lower tone to Joan, he observed, "What a bore people are to be sure, aren't they?"

The guilty couple emerged into the hall. Sir Chichester surveyed them with severity.

"I don't know whether you have heard about it, Luttrell, but there's a ball to-night at Harrel, and we all rather thought of going to it," he remarked with crushing sarcasm.

"I am quite ready, sir," replied Harry humbly. Sir Chichester was mollified.

"Very well then. We'll go."

"But Mrs. Croyle isn't down yet," said Miranda.

"Stella isn't going, dear," answered Millie Splay; and a cry of dismay burst from Joan.

"Not going!"

The consternation in the girl's voice was so pronounced that every eye in that hall turned to her in astonishment. There was consternation, too, most legible in her widely-opened eyes. Her cheeks had lost their colour. She stood for a fleeting moment before them all, an image of terror. Then she caught at an excuse.

"Stella's ill then—since she's not going."

"It's not as bad as all that, dear," Lady Splay hastened to reassure her. "She complained of a racking headache at dinner. She has gone to bed."

The blood flowed back into Joan's cheeks.

"Oh, I see!" she observed slowly. "That is why her maid came to the library for a book!"

But she was very silent throughout the quarter of an hour, which it took them to drive to Harrel. There was somebody left behind at Rackham Park that night. Joan had overlooked one possibility in contriving her plan, and that possibility, now developed into fact, threatened to ruin all. One guest remained behind in the house, and that one Joan's rival.

Rackham was a red Georgian mansion with great windows in flat rows, and lofty rooms made beautiful by the delicate tracery of the ceilings. It has neither wings nor embellishments but stood squarely in its gardens, looking southwards to the Downs. The dining-room was upon the east side, between that room and the hall was the library, of which the window faced the north. Mrs. Croyle's bedroom, however, was in the south-west corner and from its windows one could see the smoke of the train as it climbed from Midhurst to the Cocking tunnel, and the gap where the road runs through to Singleton.

"You won't be going to bed yet, madam, I suppose," said Jenny.

She had not troubled to bring upstairs into the room the book which she had picked out at random from the stand that was lying on the hall table.

"No, Jenny. I will ring for you when I want you," said Stella.

Stella was dispirited. Her week was nearly at an end. To-morrow would be the last day and she had gained nothing, it seemed, by all her care. Harry was kind—oh, ever so much kinder than in the old days when they had been together—more considerate, more thoughtful. But the skies of passion are stormily red, and so effulgent that one walks in gold. Consideration, thoughtfulness—what were these pale things worth against one spurt of fire? Besides, there was the ball to-night. He would dance with her, would seek the dim open spaces of the lawns, the dark shadows of the great elms, with her—with Joan.

"I'll ring for you, Jenny," she repeated, as her maid stood doubtfully by the door. "I am quite right."

"Very well, madam."

Stella Croyle's eyes were drawn when she was left alone to that cupboard in which her dressing-bag was stowed away. But she arrested them and covered them with her hands.

"This is my last chance," she said to herself aloud in the anguish of her spirit. If it failed, there was nothing in front of her but a loneliness which each year must augment. Youth and high spirits or the assumption of high spirits—these she must have if she were to keep her place in her poor little circle—and both were slipping from her fast. "This is my last chance." She stood in front of her mirror in her dancing frock, her dark hair exquisitely dressed, her face hauntingly wistful. After all, she was beautiful. Why shouldn't she win? Jenny thought that she could.

At that moment Jenny was slipping noiselessly along a corridor to the northern side of the house. The lights were all off; a pencil of moonlight here and there from an interstice in the curtains alone touched her as she passed. At one window she stopped, and softly lifted the blind. She looked out and was satisfied.

"Thought so!" she murmured, with a little vindictive smile. Just beneath her was that long window of the library which Joan had been at such pains to arrange.

Jenny stationed herself by the window. The night was very still. She could hear the voices of the servants in the dining-room round the angle of the house, and see the light from its windows lying in frames upon the grass. Then the light went out, and silence fell.

From time to time the hum of a motor-car swelled and diminished to its last faint vibrations on the distant road; and as each car passed Jenny stiffened at her post. She looked at her watch, turning the dial to the moonlight. It was ten minutes past nine now. The cars had left Rackham Park well before nine. She would not have long to wait now! As she slipped her watch again into her waistband she drew back with an instinctive movement, although the window at which she stood had been this last half-hour in shadow. For under a great copper beech on the grass in front of her a man was standing. The sight of him was a shock to her.

She wondered how he had come, how long he had been there—and why? Some explanation flashed upon her.

"My goodness me!" she whispered. "You could knock me down with a hairpin. So you could!"

Whilst she watched that solitary figure beneath the tree, another motor whizzed along the road. The noise of its engine grew louder—surely louder than any which, standing at this window, she had heard before. Had it turned into the park? off the main road. Was it coming to the house? Before Jenny could answer these questions in her mind, the noise ceased altogether. Jenny held her breath; and round the angle of the house a girl came running swiftly, her skirt sparkling like silver in the moonlight, and a white cloak drawn about her shoulders. She drew open the window of the library and passed in. A few seconds passed. Jenny imagined her stealthily opening the door into the hall, and listening to make sure that the servants were in their own quarters and this part of the house deserted. Then the girl reappeared at the window and made a sign. From beneath the tree the man ran across the grass. His face was turned towards Jenny, and the moonlight revealed it. The man was Mario Escobar.

Jenny drew a little sharp breath. She heard the window ever so gently latched. Suddenly the light blazed out from the room and then, strip by strip, vanished, as if the curtains had been cautiously drawn. The garden, the house resumed its aspect of quiet; all was as it had been when Jenny Prask first lifted the window of the corridor. Jenny Prask crept cautiously away.

"Fancy that!" she said to herself, with a little chuckle of triumph.

In the room below Mario Escobar and Joan Whitworth were talking.

"You insisted that I should see you. You have something to say to me," said Joan. She was breathing more quickly than usual and the blood fluttered in her cheeks, but she faced Mario Escobar with level eyes, and spoke without a tremor in her voice. So far everything had happened just as she had planned. There were these few difficult minutes now to be grappled with, and afterwards the ordeal would be ended, that foolish chapter in her life altogether closed. "Will you please be quick?" she pleaded.

But Mario Escobar was in no hurry to answer. He had never imagined that Joan Whitworth could look so beautiful. He had never dreamed that she would take so much trouble. Mario Escobar understood women's clothes, and his eyes ran with a sensation of pleasure over her delicate frock with its shining bands, its embroidery of silver and flounces of fine lace, down to her slim brocaded shoes. He had not, indeed, thought very much of her in the days when Linda Spavinsky was queen. She had been a sort of challenge to him, because of her aloofness, her indifference. Women were his profession, and here was a queer outlandish one whom it would be amusing to parade as his. So he had set to work; he had a sense of art, he could talk with ingenuity on artistic matters, and he had flattered Joan by doing so; but always with a certain definite laughter and contempt for her. Now her beauty rather swept him off his feet. He looked at her in amazement. Why this change? And—the second question for ever in his mind—how could he profit by it?

"I don't understand," he said slowly, feeling his way. "We were good friends—very good friends." Joan neither denied nor agreed. "We had certain things in common, a love of art, of the finer things of life. I made enemies, of course, in consequence. Your racing friends——" He paused. "Milly Splay, who would have matched you with some dull, tiresome squire accustomed to sleep over his port after dinner, the sort of man you are drawing so brilliantly in your wonderful book." A movement of impatience on Joan's part perplexed him. Authors! You can generally lay your praise on with a trowel. What in the world was the matter with Joan? He hurried on. "I understood that I was making enemies. I understood, too, why I was no longer invited to Rackham Park. I was a foreigner. I would as soon visit a picture gallery as shoot a pheasant. I would as soon appreciate your old gates and houses in the country as gallop after a poor little fox on the downs. Oh, yes, I wasn't popular. That I understand. But you!" and his voice softened to a gentle reproach. "You were different! And you had the courage of your difference! Since I was not invited to Rackham Park, I was to come down to the inn at Midhurst. I was to drive over—publicly, most publicly—and ask for you. We would show them that there were finer things in the world than horse-racing and lawn tennis. Oh, yes. We arranged it all at that wonderful exhibition of the New School in Green Street."

Joan writhed a little at her recollection of the pictures of the rotundists and of the fatuous aphorisms to which she had given utterance.

"I come to Midhurst accordingly, and what happens? You scribble me out a curt little letter. I am not to come to Rackham Park. I am not to try to see you. And you are writing to-morrow. But to-morrow comes, and you don't write—no, not one line!"

"It was so difficult," Joan answered. She spoke diffidently. Some of her courage had gone from her; she was confronted with so direct, so unanswerable an accusation. "I thought that you would understand that I did not wish to see you again. I thought that you would accept my wish."

Mario Escobar laughed unpleasantly.

"Why should I?"

"Because most men have that chivalry," said Joan.

Mario Escobar only smiled this time. He smiled with narrowed eves and a gleam of white teeth behind his black moustache. He was amused, like a man who receives ridiculous answers from a child.

"It is easy to see that you have read the poets—Joan," he replied deliberately.

Joan's face flamed. Never had she been addressed with so much insolence. Chaff she was accustomed to, but it was always chaff mitigated by a tenderness of real affection. Insolence and disdain were quite new to her, and they hurt intolerably. Joan, however, was learning her lessons fairly quickly. She had to get this meeting over as swiftly and quietly as she could, and high words would not help.

"It's true," she admitted meekly. "I know very little."

Joan looked very lovely as she stood nervously drumming with her gloved fingers on a little table which stood between them, all her assurance gone.

Mario Escobar lived always on the whirling edge of passion. The least extra leap of the water caught him and drew him in. He gazed at Joan, and the computing look which cast up her charms made her suddenly hot from head to foot. The good-looking, pretentious fool whom it had been amusing to exhibit amidst the black frowns of her circle had suddenly become exquisitely desirable for herself as a prize, with her beauty, her dainty care to tend it, and her delicious clothes. She would now be a real credit! Escobar took a step towards her.

"After all," he said, "we were such good friends. We had little private interests which we did not share with other people. Surely it was natural that I should wish to see you again."

Mario was speaking smoothly enough now. His voice, his eyes actually caressed her. She was at pains to repress a shiver of physical repulsion. But she remembered his letter very clearly. It had expressed no mere wish to see her. It had claimed a right with a vague threat of making trouble if the right were not conceded. She had recognised the right, not out of the fear of the threat so much—although that weighed with her, as out of a longing to have done with him for good and all. Instinct had told her that this was the last type of man to find favour in Harry Luttrell's eyes, that she herself would be lowered from her high pedestal in his heart, if he knew of the false friendship.

"Well, I agreed to see you," she replied. "But I have to go back to the ball. Will you please to be quick?"

"The time and the place were of your own choice."

"My choice!" Joan answered. "I had no choice. A girl amongst visitors in a country house—when is she free? When is she alone? She can keep to her room—yes! But that's all her liberty. Let her go out, there will be some one at her side."

"If she is like you—no doubt," said Escobar, and again he smiled at her covetously. Joan shook the compliment off her with a hitch of her shoulders.

"We could have met in a hundred places," Mario continued.

"I could have come to call on you as we arranged."

"No!" cried Joan with more vigour than wisdom in her voice. She had a picture of him, of the embarrassment of the Splays and her friends, of the disapproval of Harry Luttrell.

Escobar was quick when he dealt with women, quick and sensitive. The passionate denial did not escape him. He began to divine the true cause of this swift upheaval and revolution in her.

"You could have sent me a card for the Willoughbys' dance. It would have been easy enough for us to meet there."

Again she replied, "No!" A note of obstinacy was audible.

"Why?"

Joan did not answer at all.

"I'll tell you," Escobar flashed out at her angrily. "You wouldn't be seen with me any more! Suddenly, you would not be seen with me—no, not for the world! That's the truth, isn't it? That's why you come secretly back and bid me meet you in an empty house."

"Hush!" pleaded Joan.

Mario Escobar's voice had risen as his own words flogged him to a keener indignation.

"Why should I care if all the world hears me?" he replied roughly. "Why should I consider you, who turn me down the moment it suits you, without a reason? It's fairly galling to me, I assure you."

Joan nodded her head. Mario Escobar had some right upon his side, she was ready to acknowledge.

"I beg your pardon," she said simply. "Won't you please be content with that and leave things as they are?"

"When you are a little older you will know that you can never leave things as they are," answered Mario. "I was looking forward to a week of happiness. I have had a week of torment. For lesser insults than yours, men kill in my country."

There were other differences, too, between her country and his. Joan did not cry out, or burst into tears or flinch in any way. She was alone in this room; there was no one, as far as she knew, within the reach of her voice. She had chosen this meeting-place, not altogether because the house would be empty, but because in this first serious difficulty of her life she would be amongst familiar things and draw from them confidence and strength, and a sense of security. With Mario Escobar in front of her, his face ablaze with passion, the security vanished altogether. Yet all the more she was raised to the top of her courage.

"Then I shall tell you the truth," she answered gently. "You speak to me of our friendship. It was never anything serious to me. It was a taunt—a foolish taunt to other people."

Mario Escobar flinched, as if she had struck him in the face.

"Yes, I hurt you," she went on in the same gentle voice, which was not the least element in Escobar's humiliation. "I am very sorry. I tried not to hurt you. I am very ignorant, as you have told me, but I wouldn't believe it till a week ago. I made it my pride to be different from anybody else. I believed that I was different. I was a fool. I wouldn't listen. Even during the war. I have shut myself up away from it, trying not to share in the effort, not to feel the pride and the sorrow, pretending that it was just a horrible, sordid business altogether beneath lofty minds! That's one of the reasons why I chose you for my friend! I was flinging my glove in the face of the little world I knew. I had got to be different. It's all very shameful to tell, and I am sorry. Oh, how I am sorry!"

Her sorrow was most evident. She had sunk down upon a couch, her fair head drooping and the tears now running down her cheeks in the bitterness of her shame. But Mario Escobar was untouched by any pity. If any thought occurred to him outside his burning humiliation, it was prompted by the economy of the Spaniard.

"She'll spoil that frock if she goes on crying," he said to himself, "and it was very expensive."

"I have nothing but remorse to offer in atonement," she went on. "But that remorse is very sincere——"

Mario Escobar swept her plea aside with a furious gesture.

"So that's it!" he cried. "You were just making a fool of me!" That she, this pretty pink and white girl, should have been making a show of him, parading him before her friends, exhibiting him, using him as a challenge—just as in fact he had been using her, and with more success! Only to think of it hurt him like a knife. "Your remorse!" he cried scornfully. "There's some one else, of course!"

Joan sat up straight and stiff. Escobar might have laid a lash across her delicate shoulders.

"Yes," she said defiantly.

"Some one who was not here a week ago?"

"Yes."

To Escobar's humiliation was now added a sudden fire of jealousy. For the first time to-night, as woman, as flesh and blood, she was adorable, and she owed this transformation, not to him, no, not in the tiniest fraction of a degree to him, but to some one else, some dull boor without niceties or deftness, who had stormed into her life within the week. Who was it? He had got to know. But Joan was hardly thinking of Escobar. Her eyes were turned from him.

"He has set me free from many vanities and follies. If I am grieved and ashamed now, I owe it thankfully to him. If my remorse is bitter, it is because through him I have a gleam of light which helps me to understand."

"And you have told him what you have told me?"

"No, but I shall to-night when all this is over, when I go back to Harrel."

Mario Escobar moved closer to her.

"Are you so sure that you are going back to Harrel to-night?" he asked in a low voice.

"Yes," she replied, and only after she had spoken did the menace of his voice force itself into her mind as something which she must take into account. She looked up at him startled, and as she looked her wonderment turned into stark fear. The cry that in his country men killed had left her unmoved. But she was afraid now, desperately afraid, all the more afraid because she thought of the man searching for her through the reception-rooms at Harrel.

"We are alone here in an empty quarter of the house. So you arranged it," he continued. "Good! Women do not amuse themselves at my expense without being paid for it."

Joan started up in a panic, but Escobar seized her shoulders and forced her down again.

"Sit still," he cried savagely. Then his face changed. For the first time for many minutes his lips parted in a smile of pleasure.

"You are very lovely, Joan. I love to see you like that—afraid—trembling. It is the beginning of recompense."

Joan had tumbled into a deeper pit than any she had dreamed of. In desperation she cast about for means to climb out of it. The secrecy of this meeting—that must go. But, even so, was there escape? The bell? Before she could be half-way across the room, he would be holding her in his arms. A cry? Before it was half uttered, he would have stifled her mouth. No, she must sit very still and provoke no movement by him.

Mario Escobar was a creature of unhealthy refinements. He wanted to know, first, who was the man who had touched this indifferent maiden into warm life. The knowledge would be an extra spice to his pleasure.

"Who are staying in the house?" he asked. It would be amusing to make his selection, and discover if he were right.

"Dennis Brown, Harold Jupp"—Joan began, puzzled by his question, yet welcoming it as so much delay.

"I don't want to hear about them," Mario Escobar replied. "Tell me of the new-comers!"

"Martin Hillyard——" Joan began again, and was aware that Mario Escobar made a quick startled movement and gasped. Martin Hillyard's name was a pail of cold water for Escobar.

"Does Hillyard know that I am at Midhurst?" he asked sharply.

"No," Joan answered.

There was something which Hillyard had told her about Mario Escobar, something which she had rejected and dismissed altogether from her thoughts. Then she remembered. Escobar was an enemy working in England against England. She had given the statement no weight whatever. It was the sort of thing people said of unconventional people they disliked in order to send them to Coventry. But Escobar's start and Escobar's question put a different value upon it. Joan caught at it. Of what use could it be to her? Of some use, surely, if only she had the wit to divine it. But she was in such a disorder of fear and doubt that every idea went whirling about and about in her mind. She raised her hand to her forehead, keeping her eyes upon Escobar. She felt as helpless as a child. Almost she regretted the love which had so violently mastered her. It had made clear to her her ignorance and so stripped her of all assurance and left her defenceless.

But even in the tumult of her thoughts, she began to recognise a change. The air was less charged with terror. There was less of passion and anger in Mario Escobar, and more of speculation. He watched her in a gloomy silence, and each moment she took fresh heart. With a swift movement he seated himself on the couch beside her.

Joan sprang up with a little cry, and her heart thumping in her breast.

"Hush!" said Escobar. Yes, it was now he who pleaded for secrecy and a quiet voice.

There was a stronger passion in Mario than the love of women, and that was the love of money. Women were to him mainly the means to money. They were easier to get, too, if you were not over particular. Money was a rare, shy thing, except to an amazing few who accumulated it by some obscure, magnetic attraction; and opportunities of acquisition were not to be missed.

"Hush!" he said. "You treated me badly, Joan. It was right that I should teach you a lesson—frighten you a little, eh?"

He smiled at her with eyes half closed and eyelids cunningly blinking. Now that her fears were weakening Joan found his impertinence almost insufferable. But she held her tongue and waited.

"But you owe me a return, don't you?"

Joan did not move.

"A little return—which will cost you nothing at all. You know that I represent a line of ships. You can help me. We have rivals, with active agents. You shall find out for me exactly what Martin Hillyard is doing in the Mediterranean, and why he visits in a yacht the ports of Spain. You will find this out for me, so that I may know whether he is acting for my rivals. Yes."

"He is not," answered Joan.

"You will find this out for me, so that I may know," Escobar repeated smoothly. "Exactly what he is doing in the Mediterranean, what special plans, and why he visits in a yacht the ports of Spain. You promise me that knowledge, and you can go straight back to your dancing."

"I have no knowledge," said Joan quietly.

"But you can obtain it," Escobar insisted. "He is a friend of yours. Exactly what he is doing—is it not so?"

So Martin's accusation was true. Joan nodded her head, and Escobar, with a smile of relief, took the gesture as a consent to his proposal.

"Good!" he said, rising from the couch. "Then all is forgiven! You will make some notes——"

"I will do nothing of the kind," said Joan quietly, but she was white to the edge of her lips, and she trembled from head to foot. But there was no room any more for fear in her. She was in a heat of anger which she had never known. "Oh, that you should dare!" and her words choked her.

Mario Escobar stared at her.

"You refuse?"

"With all my soul."

Escobar took a step towards her, but she did not move.

"You are alone with me, when you should be dancing at the ball. You made the appointment, chose the hour, the place ... even if you scream, there will be a scandal, a disgrace."

"I don't care."

"And the man you are in love with, eh? That makes a difference," he said, as he saw the girl falter. "Do we think of him?"

"No," said Joan. "We incur the disgrace."

She saw his eyes open wide with terror. He drew a step away from her. "Oh!" he exclaimed, in a long-drawn whisper; and he looked at Joan with incredulity and hatred. "You——" he used some Spanish word which Joan did not catch. It would have told her little if she had caught it. It was "Cabron," a harmless, inoffensive word which has become in Spain the ultimate low word of abuse. "You have laid a trap for me."

Joan answered him in a bewilderment. "I have laid no trap for you," and there was so much scorn and contempt in her voice that Escobar could hardly disbelieve her.

But he was shaken. He was in a panic. He was in a haste to go. Money—yes. But you must live in order to enjoy it.

"I will give you a day to think over my proposal," he said, stammering the words in his haste. And then, "Don't write to me! I will find a means," and, almost before she was aware of his movements, he had snatched up his cap, and the room was empty. The curtain was torn aside; the glass door stood open; beyond it the garden lay white in the light of the moon.

"A trap?" Joan repeated his accusation in a perplexity. She turned and she saw the door, the door behind her, which Escobar had faced, the door into the hall, slowly open. There had been no turning of the handle, it was unlatched before. Yet Joan had seen to it that it was shut before ever she beckoned Mario Escobar into the room. Some one, then, had been listening. Mario Escobar had seen the handle move, the door drawn ajar. Joan saw it open now to its full width, and in the entrance Stella Croyle.

Joan picked up her cloak and arranged it upon her shoulders. She did not give one thought to Stella, or even hear the words which Stella began nervously to speak. Her secret appointment would come to light now in any case. It would very likely cost her—oh, all the gold and glamour of the world. It would be bandied about in gossip over the tea-tables, in the street, at the Clubs, in the Press. Sir Chichester ought to be happy, at all events. The thought struck her with a wry humour, and brought a smile to her lips. He would accomplish his dream. Without effort, without a letter or a telephone call, or a rebuff, he would have such publicity as he could hardly have hoped for. "Who is that?" Joan made up a little scene. "That? Oh, don't you know? That's Sir Chichester Splay. You must have heard of Sir Chichester! Why, it was in his house that the Whitworth girl, rather pretty but an awful fool, carried on with the spy-man."

Joan was a little overstrung. All the while she was powdering her nose in front of a mirror and removing as best she could the traces of tears, and all the while Mrs. Croyle was stammering words and words and words behind her. Joan regretted that Stella was not going to the Willoughbys' ball. If she had been, she would probably be carrying some rouge in her little hand-bag, and Joan might have borrowed some.

"Well, since you haven't got any with you, I must go," said Joan, bursting suddenly into Stella's monologue. But she had caught a name spoken just before Stella stopped in her perplexity at Joan's outbreak.

"Harry Luttrell!" Joan repeated. What in the world had Stella Croyle got to say to her about Harry Luttrell? But Stella resumed her faltering discourse and the sense of her words penetrated at last to Joan's brain and amazed her.

Joan was to leave Harry Luttrell alone.

"You are quite young," said Stella, "only twenty. What does he matter to you? You have everything in front of you. With your looks and your twenty years you can choose where you will. You have lovers already——"

"I?" Joan interrupted.

"Mario Escobar."

Joan repeated the name with such a violence of scorn that for a moment Stella Croyle was silenced.

"Mario Escobar!"

"He was here with you a moment ago."

Joan answered quietly and quite distinctly:

"I wish he were dead!"

Stella Croyle fell back upon her first declaration.

"You must leave my Wub alone."

Joan laughed aloud, harshly and without any merriment. She checked herself with an effort lest she should go on laughing, and her laughter turn uncontrollably into hysteria and tears. Here was Mrs. Croyle, a grown woman, standing in front of her like a mutinous obstinate child, looking like one too, talking like one and bidding Joan leave her Wub alone. Whence did she get that ridiculous name? It was all degrading and grotesque.

"Your Wub! Your Wub!" she cried in a heat. "Yes, I am only twenty, and probably I am quite wrong and stupid. But it seems to me horrible that we two women should be wrangling over a man neither of us had met a week ago. I'll have no more of it."

She flung towards the window, but Stella Croyle cried out, "A week ago!" and the cry brought her to a stop. Joan turned and looked doubtfully at Mrs. Croyle. After all, that ridiculous label had not been pasted on to Harry Luttrell as a result of a week's acquaintance. Harry Luttrell had certainly talked to Stella through the greater part of an evening, his first evening in the house, but they had hardly been together at all since then. Joan came back slowly into the room.

"So you knew Colonel Luttrell before this week?"

"We were great friends a few years ago."

It was disturbing to Joan that Harry Luttrell had never spoken to her of this friendship. Was it possible that Stella had a claim upon him of which she herself knew nothing? She sat down at a table in front of Mrs. Croyle.

"Tell me," she said.

Once, long ago, upon the deck of the Dragonfly at Stockholm, Stella had cried out to Harry Luttrell, "Oh, what a cruel mistake you made when you went out of your way to be kind!" Joan was now to hear how that cry had come to be uttered by a woman in the nethermost distress. She knew, of course, that Stella was married at the age of seventeen and had been divorced, but little more than that.

"There was a little girl," said Stella, "my baby. I lost her."

She spoke very simply. She had come to the end of efforts and schemes, and was very tired. Joan's anger died away altogether in her heart.

"Oh, I am very sorry," she replied. "I didn't know that you had a little girl."

"Yes. Look, here is her portrait." Stella Croyle drew out from her bosom a locket which hung night and day against her heart, and showed it to Joan across the table. "But I don't know whether she is little any more. She is thirteen now."

Joan gazed at the painted miniature of a lovely child with the eyes and the hair of Stella Croyle.

"And you lost her altogether?" she asked with a rising pity.

"Not at first," answered Stella. "I was allowed by the Court to have her with me for one month in every year. And I lived the other eleven months for the one, the wonderful one."

Stella's face softened indescribably. The memory of her child did for her what all her passion for Harry Luttrell could not do. It restored her youth. Her eyes grew tender, her mouth quivered, the look of conflict vanished altogether.

"We had good times together, my baby and I. I took her to the sea. It sounds foolish, but we were more like a couple of children together than mother and daughter"; and Joan, looking at the delicate, porcelain-like figure in front of her, smiled in response.

"Yes, I can understand that."

"She was with me every minute," Stella Croyle resumed. "I watched her so, I gave her so much of me that when I had seen her off at the station with her nurse at the end of the month, I was left behind, as weak and limp as an invalid. I lived for her, Joan, believe that at all events in my favour! There was no one else."

"I do believe it."

"Then one year in the winter she did not come to me."

"They kept her back!" cried Joan. "But you had the right to her."

"Yes. And I went down to Exeter to her father's house, to fetch her away."

It was curious that Stella Croyle, who was speaking of her own distressful life, told her story with a quiet simplicity of tone, as if she had bent her neck in submission to the hammer strokes of her destiny; whereas Joan, who was but listening to griefs of another, was stirred to a compassion which kindled her face and made her voice shake.

"Oh, they hadn't sent her away! She was waiting for you," she cried eagerly.

"She was waiting for me. Yes! But it was no longer my baby who was waiting. They had worked on her, Robert, my husband—and his sisters. They had told her—oh, more than they need! That I was bad."

"Oh!" breathed Joan.

"Yes, they were a little cruel. They had changed baby altogether. She was just eight at that time." Stella stopped for a moment or two. Her voice did not falter but her eyes suddenly swam with tears. "She used to adore me—she really and truly did. Now her little face and her eyes were like flint. And what do you think she said to me? Just this! 'Mummy, I don't want to go with you. If you take me with you, you'll spoil my holidays!'"

Joan shot back in her chair.

"But they had taught her to say that?"

Stella Croyle shook her head.

"They had taught her to dislike me. My little girl has character. She wouldn't have repeated the words, because she had been taught them. No, she meant them."

"But a day or two with you and she would have forgotten them. Oh, she did forget them!"

In her great longing to comfort the woman, whose deep anguish she divined beneath the quiet desolation of her voice, Joan overleapt her own knowledge. She was still young enough to will that past events had not occurred, and that things true were false.

"I didn't take her," replied Stella Croyle. "I wouldn't take her. I knew baby—besides she had struck me too hard."

"You came away alone!" whispered Joan.

"In the cab which I had kept waiting at the door to take us both away."

"That's terrible!" said Joan. The child with her lovely face set like flint in the room, the mother creeping out of the house and stumbling alone into the fly at the door—the picture was vivid before her eyes. Joan wrung her hands with a little helpless gesture, and a moan upon her lips. Almost it seemed that these sad things were actually happening to her; so poignantly she felt them.

"Oh, and you had all that long journey back to London, the journey you had dreamt of for eleven months with your baby at your side—you had now to take it alone."

Stella Croyle shook her head.

"No! There was just one and only one of my friends—and not at all a great friend—who had the imagination to understand, as you understand too, Joan, just what that journey would have meant to me, if anything had gone wrong, and the kindness to put himself out to make its endurance a little easier."

Joan drew back quickly.

"Harry Luttrell," she whispered.

"Yes. He had once been stationed at Exeter. He knew Robert Croyle and the sisters. He guessed what might happen to me. Perhaps he knew that it was going to happen."

So, when Stella, having pulled down her veil that none might see her face, was stumbling along the platform in search of an empty carriage, a hand was very gently laid upon her and Harry Luttrell was at her side. He had come all the way from London to befriend her, should she need it. If he had seen her with her little girl, he would have kept out of sight and himself have returned to London by a later train.

"That was fine," cried Joan.

"Fine, yes!" answered Stella. "You realise that, Joan, and you have never been in real trouble, or known what men are when kindness interferes with their comfort. I am not blaming people, but women do get the worst of it, if they are fools enough—wicked enough if you like, to do as I did. I knew men—lots of them. I was bound to. I was fair game, you see."

Joan's forehead wrinkled. The doors of knowledge had been opening very rapidly for her during the last few minutes. But she was still often at a loss.

"Fair game. Why? I don't understand."

"I had been divorced. Therefore I wasn't dangerous. Complications couldn't follow from a little affair with me." Stella explained bitterly. "I had men on my doorstep always. But not one of these men who protested and made love to me, would have put themselves out to do what Harry Luttrell did. It was fine—yes. But for three years I have been wondering whether Harry Luttrell would not really have been kinder if he had thought of his own comfort too, and had never travelled to Exeter to befriend me."

"Why?" asked Joan.

"I should have thrown myself out of the carriage and saved myself—oh, so much sorrow afterwards," Stella Croyle answered in so simple and natural a voice that Joan could not disbelieve her.

Joan clasped her hands before her eyes and then gazed again at Stella sitting in front of her, with pity and wonder. It was so hard for her to understand that this pretty woman, who made it her business to be gay, whom she had met from time to time in this house and had chatted with and forgotten, had passed through so dreadful an ordeal of suffering and humiliation. She was to look closer still into the mysteries which were being revealed to her.

Harry Luttrell had held Stella in his arms just as if she had been a child herself whilst the train rushed through the bleak winter country. Stella had behaved like a child, now sobbing in a passion of grief, now mutinous in a passion of rage, now silent and despairing under the weights that nothing, neither sympathy, nor grief, nor revolt, can lift.

"He took me home. He stayed with me. Oh, it wasn't love," cried Stella. "He was afraid."

"Afraid!" asked Joan. She wished to know every least detail of the story now.

"Afraid lest I should take—something ... as I wished to do ... as during the trouble of the divorce I learned to do."

She related little ridiculous incidents which Joan listened to with a breaking heart. Stella could not sleep at all after her return. She lived in a little house with a big garden on the northern edge of London, and all night she lay awake, listening to the patter of rain on melancholy trees, and thinking and thinking. Harry Luttrell kept her from the drugs in her dressing-case. She had no anodyne for her sorrows—but one.

"You will laugh," said Stella with a little wry smile of her own, "when I tell you what it was. It was a gramophone. I got Harry to set it going, whilst I lay in bed—to set it playing rag-time. While it was playing, I stopped thinking. For I had to keep time in my brain with the beat of the tune. And so, at last, since I couldn't think, or remember, I fell asleep. The gramophone saved me"; and again Joan was smitten by the incongruity of Stella with her life. She had eaten of all that nature allots to women—love, marriage, the birth of children, the loss of them—and there she was, to this day half-child, and quite incompatible with what she had suffered and endured.

"After a fortnight I got quieter of course," said Stella. "And suddenly a change sadder than anything I have told you took place in me. I suppose that I had gone through too much on baby's account for me. I lost something more than my baby, I lost my want to have her with me."

She remained silent for a little while reviewing the story which she had told.

"There, that's all," she said, rising suddenly. "It's no claim at all, of course. I know that very well. Harry left me at Stockholm four years ago;" and suddenly Joan's face flushed scarlet. She had been absorbed in Stella's sorrows, she had admired that kind action of Harry Luttrell's which had brought so much trouble in its train. It needed that reminder that Harry had only left Stella Croyle at Stockholm to bring home the whole part which Harry had taken in the affair. Now she understood; a flame of sudden jealousy confused her; and with it came a young girl's distaste as though some ugly reptile had raised its head amongst flowers.

"I never saw Harry again until this week, except for a minute outside a shop one morning in Piccadilly. But he hasn't married during those four years, so I always kept a hope that we should be somewhere together again for a few days, and that afterwards he would come back to me."

"That's why you chose this week to come to Rackham Park?"

"Yes," answered Stella Croyle; and she laughed harshly. "But I hadn't considered you."

Joan looked helplessly at her companion. Stella had not one small chance of the fulfilment of her hope—no, not one—even if she herself stood a million miles away. Of that Joan was sure. But how was she to say so to one who was blind and deaf to all but her hope, who would not listen, who would not see? Mario Escobar had left his gloves behind him on a couch. Joan saw them, and remembered to whom they belonged, and her thoughts took another complexion. Harry Luttrell! What share had she now in his life? She rose abruptly and pushed back her chair.

"Oh, I'll stand aside," she said, "never fear! We are to talk things over to-night. I shall say 'No.'"

She had turned again to the window, but a startled question from Stella Croyle stayed her feet.

"Harry has asked you to marry him?"

"He was going to," Joan faltered. The sense of her own loss returned upon her, she felt utterly alone, all the more alone because of the wondrous week which had come to so desolate an end to-night. "Here in this little room, not two hours ago. But I asked him to wait until supper time to-night. Here—it was here we stood!"

Joan looked down. Yes, she had been standing in this very spot, the table here upon her left, that chair upon her right, that trifolium in the pattern of the carpet under her feet, when Harry Luttrell had taken her in his arms. What foolish thing was Stella Croyle saying now?

"I take back all that I have said to you. If Harry has spoken to you already I have lost—that's all. I didn't know," she said. Her cheeks were white, her eyes suddenly grown large with a horror in them which Joan could not understand.

"Yes, it's all over. I have lost," she kept repeating in a dreadful whisper, moistening her dry lips with her tongue between her sentences.

"Oh, don't think that I am standing aside out of pity," Joan answered her. "To-morrow I shall be impossible as a wife for Harry Luttrell." The words fell upon ears which did not hear. It would not have mattered if Stella had heard. Since Harry Luttrell was that night asking Joan to marry him, the hopes upon which she had so long been building, which Jenny Prask had done so much to nurse and encourage, withered and crumbled in an instant.

"I must go back and dance," said Joan with a shiver.

She left Stella Croyle standing in the room like one possessed with visions of terrible things. Her tragic face and moving lips were to haunt Joan for many a month afterwards. She went out by the window and ran down the drive to the spot where she had left Miranda's car half-way between the lodge and the house. The gates had been set open that night against the return of the party from Harrel. Joan drove back again under the great over-arching trees of the road. It was just ten o'clock when she slipped into the ball-room and was claimed by a neighbour for a dance.

Martin Hillyard crammed a year's enjoyment into the early hours of that night. He danced a great deal and had supper a good many times; and even the girl who had passed the season of 1914 in London and said languidly, "Tell me more," before he had opened his mouth, failed to ruffle his enjoyment.

"If I did, you would scream for your mother," he replied, "and I should be turned out of the house and Sir Chichester would lose his position in the county. No, I'll tell you less. That means we'll go and have some supper."

He led a subdued maiden into the supper-room and from that moment his enjoyment began to wane. For, at a little table near to hand, sat Joan Whitworth and Harry Luttrell, and it was clear to him from the distress upon their faces that their smooth courtship had encountered its obstacles. A spot of anger, indeed, seemed to burn in Joan's cheeks. They hardly spoke at all.

Half an hour later, he came face to face with Joan in a corridor.

"I have been looking for you for a long while," she cried in a quick, agitated voice. "Are you free for this dance?"

"Yes."

Martin Hillyard lied without compunction.

"Then will you take me into the garden?"

He found a couple of chairs in a corner of the terrace out of the hearing of the rest.

"We shall be quiet here," he said. He hoped that she would disclose the difficulty which had risen between herself and Harry, and seek his counsel as Harry's friend. It might be one of the little trifling discords which love magnifies until they blot out the skies and drape the earth in temporary mourning. But Joan began at once nervously upon a different topic.

"You made a charge against Mario Escobar the other day. I did not believe it. But you spoke the truth. I know that now."

She stopped and gazed woefully in front of her. Then she hurried on.

"I can prove it. He demands news of your movements in the Mediterranean. If it is necessary I must come forward publicly and prove it. It will be horrible, but of course I will."

Martin looked at her quickly. She kept her eyes averted from him. Her fingers plucked nervously at her dress. There was an aspect of shame in her attitude.

"It will not be necessary, Joan," he answered. "I have quite enough evidence already to put him away until the end of the war."

Joan turned to him with quivering lips.

"You are sure. It means so much to me to escape—what I have no right to escape, I can hardly believe it."

"I am quite sure," replied Martin Hillyard.

Joan breathed a long, fluttering sigh of relief. She sat up as though a weight had been loosed from her shoulders. The trouble lifted from her face.

"You need not call upon me at all?"

"No."

"I don't want to shirk—any more," she insisted. "I should not hesitate."

"I know that, Joan," he said with a smile. She looked out over the gardens to the great line of hills, dim and pleasant as fairyland in the silver haze of the moonlight. Her eyes travelled eastwards along the ridge and stopped at the clump of Bishop's Ring which marks the crest of Duncton Hill, and the dark fold below where the trees flow down to Graffham.

"You ask me no questions," she said in a low, warm voice. "I am very grateful."

"I ask you one. Where is Mario Escobar to-night?"

"At Midhurst," and she gave him the name of the hotel.

Martin Hillyard laughed. Whilst the police were inquiring here and searching there and watching the ports for him, he was lying almost within reach of his hand, snugly and peacefully at Midhurst.

"But I expect that he will go from Midhurst now," Joan added, remembering his snarl of fear when the door had opened behind her, and the haste with which he had fled.

Hillyard looked at his watch. It was one o'clock in the morning.

"You are in a hurry?" she asked.

"I ought to send a message." He turned to Joan. "You know this house, of course. Is there a telephone in a quiet room, where I shall not be interrupted or be drowned out, voice and ears by the music?"

"Yes, Mrs. Willoughby's sitting-room upstairs. Shall I ask her if you may use it?"

"If you please."

Joan left Martin standing in one of the corridors and rejoined him after a few minutes. "Come," she said, and led the way upstairs to the room. Martin called up the trunk line and gave a number.

"I shall have to wait a few minutes," he said.

"You want me to go," answered Joan, and she moved towards the door reluctantly.

"No. But you will be missing your dances."

Joan shook her head. She did not turn back to him, but stood facing the door as she replied; so that he could not see her face.

"I had kept all the dances after supper free. If I am not in the way I would rather wait with you."

"Of course."

He was careful to use the most commonplace tone with the thought that it would steady her. The trouble which this telephone message would finally dispel was clearly not all which distressed her. She needed companionship; her voice broke, as though her heart were breaking too. He saw her raise a wisp of handkerchief to her eyes; and then the telephone bell rang at his side. He was calling at a venture upon the number which Commodore Graham had rung up in the office above the old waterway of the Thames.

"Is that Scotland Yard?" he asked, and he gave the address at which Mario Escobar was to be found. "But he may be gone to-morrow," he added, and hearing a short "That's all right," he rang off.

"Now, if you will get your cloak, we might go back into the garden."

They found their corner of the terrace unoccupied and sat for a while in silence. Hillyard recognised that neither questions nor any conversation at all were required from him, but simply the sympathy of his companionship. He smoked a cigarette while Joan sat by his side.

She stretched out her hand towards the Bishop's Ring, small as a button upon the great shoulder of the Down.

"Do you remember the afternoon when I drove you back from Goodwood?"

"Yes."

"You said to me, 'If the great trial is coming, I want to fall back into the rank and file.' And I cried out, 'Oh, I understand that!'"

"I remember."

"What a fool I was!" said Joan. "I didn't understand at all. I thought that it sounded fine, and that was why I applauded. I am only beginning to understand now. Even after I had agreed with you, my one ambition was to be different."

Her voice died remorsefully away. From the window further down the terrace the yellow light poured from the windows and fought with the moonlight. The music of a waltz floated out upon the yearning of many violins. There was a ripple of distant voices.

"All this week," Joan began again, "I have found myself standing unexpectedly in a strong light before a mirror and utterly scared by the revelation of what I was ... by the memory of the foolish things which I had done. From one of the worst of them, you have saved me to-night. You are very kind to me, Martin."

It was the first time he had ever heard her use his Christian name.

"I should like to be kinder, if you'll let me," he said. "I am not blind. I was in the supper-room when you and Harry were there. It was for him that you had kept all the last dances free. And you are here, breaking your heart. Why?"

Joan shook her head. A little sob broke from her against her will. But this matter was between her and Harry Luttrell. She sought no counsel from any other.

"Then I am very grieved for both of you," said Hillyard. Joan made a movement as if she were about to rise. "Will you wait just a moment?" Martin asked.

He guessed that some hint of Stella Croyle's story had reached the girl's ears. He understood that she would be hurt, and affronted; that she would feel herself suddenly steeped in vulgarities; and that she would visit her resentment sharply upon her lover, and upon herself at the same time. And all this was true. But Martin was not sure of it. He meant to tread warily, lest if he stumbled, the harm should be the more complete.

"I have known Harry Luttrell a long while," he said. "No woman ever reached his heart until he came home from France this summer. No woman I believe, could have reached it—not even you, Joan, I believe, if you had met him a year ago. He was possessed by one great shame and one great longing—shame that the regiment with which he and his father were bound up, had once disgraced itself—longing for the day to come when it would recover its prestige. Those two emotions burnt in him like white flames. I believe no other could have lived beside them."

Joan would not speak, but she concentrated all her senses to listen. A phrase which Stella Croyle had used—Harry had feared to become "the slovenly soldier"—began to take on its meaning.

"On the Somme the shame was wiped out. Led by such men as Harry—well, you know what happened. Harry Luttrell came home freed at last from an overwhelming obsession. He looked about him with different eyes, and there you were! It seems to me a thing perfectly ordained, as so few things are. I brought him down here just for a pleasant week in the country—without another thought beyond that. All this week I have been coming to think of myself as an unconscious agent, who just at the right time is made to do the right thing. Here was the first possible moment for Harry Luttrell—and there you were in the path—just as if you without knowing it, had been set there to wait until he came over the fields to you."

He turned to her and took her hand in his. He had his sympathies for Stella Croyle, but her hopes held no positive promise of happiness for either her or Harry Luttrell—a mere flash and splutter of passion at the best, with all sorts of sordid disadvantages to follow, quarrels, the scorn of his equals, the loss of position, the check to advancement in his profession. Here, on the other hand, was the fitting match.

"It would be a great pity," he said gently, "if anything were now to interfere."

He stood up and after a moment Joan rose to her feet. There was a tender smile upon her lips and her eyes were shining. She laid a hand upon his arm.

"I shall have to get you a wife, Martin," she said, midway between laughter and tears. "It wouldn't be fair on us if you were to escape."

This was her way of thanking him.

The amazing incident which cut so sharply into these tangled lives occurred the next morning at Rackham Park. Some of the house party straggled down to a late breakfast, others did not descend at all. Harry Luttrell joined Millie Splay upon the stairs and stopped her before she entered the breakfast-room.

"I should like to slip away this morning, Lady Splay," he said. "My servant is packing now."

Millie Splay looked at him in dismay.

"Oh, I am so sorry," she said. "I was hoping that this morning you and Joan would have something to say to me."

"I did too," replied Harry with a wry smile. "But Joan turned me down with a bang last night."

Lady Splay plumped herself down on a chair in the hall.

"Oh, she is the most exasperating girl!" she cried. "Are you sure that you didn't misunderstand her?"

"Quite."

Lady Splay sat for a little while with her cheek propped upon her hand and her brows drawn together in a perplexity.

"It's very strange," she said at length. "For Joan meant you to ask her to marry you. She has been deliberately showing you that you weren't indifferent to her. Joan would never have done that if she hadn't meant you to ask her; or if she hadn't meant to accept you." She rose with a gesture of despair.

"I give it up. But oh, how I'd love to smack her!" and with that unrealisable desire burning furiously in her breast, Lady Splay marched into the breakfast-room. Dennis Brown and Jupp were already in their white flannels at the table. Miranda ran down into the room a moment afterwards.

"Joan's the lazy one," she said, looking round the table. She had got to bed at half-past four and looked as fresh as if she had slept the clock round. "What are you going to eat, Colonel Luttrell?"

Luttrell was standing by her at the side table, and as they inspected the dishes they were joined by Mr. Albany Todd.

"You were going it last night," Jupp called to him, with a note of respect in his voice. "For a top-weight you're the hottest thing I have seen in years. Stay another week in our academic company, and we shall discover so many excellent qualities in you that we shall be calling you Toddles."

"And then in the winter, I suppose, we'll go jumping together," said Mr. Albany Todd.

Like many another round and heavy man, Mr. Albany Todd was an exceptionally smooth dancer. His first dance on the night before he had owed to the consideration of his hostess. Sheer merit had filled the rest of his programme; and he sat down to breakfast now in a high good humour. Sir Chichester stumped into the room when the serious part of the meal was over, and all the newspapers already taken. He sat down in front of his kidney and bacon and grunted.

"Any news in The Times, Mr. Albany Todd?"

"No! No!" replied Mr. Albany Todd in an abstracted voice, with his head buried between the pages. "Would you like it, Sir Chichester?"

He showed no intention of handing it over; and Sir Chichester replied with as much indifference as he could assume,

"Oh, there's no hurry."

"No, we have all the morning, haven't we?" said Mr. Albany Todd pleasantly.

Sir Chichester ate some breakfast and drank some tea. "No news in your paper is there, Dennis, my boy?" he asked carelessly.

"Oh, isn't there just?" cried Dennis Brown. "Oppifex and Hampstead Darling are both running in the two-thirty at Windsor."

Sir Chichester grunted again.

"Racing! It's wonderful, Mr. Albany Todd, that you haven't got the disease during the week. There's a racing microbe at Rackham."

"But I am not so sure that I have escaped," returned Mr. Albany Todd. "I am tempted to go jumping in the winter."

"You must keep your old Lords out if you do," Harold Jupp urged earnestly. "Bring in your Dukes and your Marquises, and we poor men are all up the spout."

Thus they rattled on about the breakfast table; cigarettes were lighted, Miranda pushed back her chair; in a minute the room would be deserted. But Millie Splay uttered a little cry of horror, so sharp and startling that it froze each person into a sudden immobility. She dropped the newspaper upon her knees. Her hands flew to her face and covered it.

"What's the matter, Millie?" cried Sir Chichester, starting up in alarm. He hurried round the table. Some stab of physical pain had caused Millie's cry—he shared that conviction with every one else in the room. But Millie lifted her head quickly.

"Oh, it's intolerable!" she exclaimed. "Chichester, look at this!" She thrust the paper feverishly into his hands. Sir Chichester smoothed its crumpled leaves as he stood beside her.

"Ah, the Harpoon," he said, his fear quite allayed. He knew his wife to have a somewhat thinner skin than himself. "You are exaggerating no doubt, my dear. The Harpoon is a good paper and quite friendly."

But Millie Splay broke in upon his protestations in a voice as shrill as a scream.

"Oh, stop, Chichester, and look! There, in the third column! Just under your eyes!"

And Sir Chichester Splay read. As he read his face changed.

"Yes, that won't do," he said, very quietly. He carried the newspaper back with him to his chair and sat down again. He had the air of a man struck clean out of his wits. "That won't do," he repeated, and again, with a rush of angry blood into his face, "No, that won't do." It seemed that Sir Chichester's harmless little foible had suddenly received more than its due punishment.

The newspaper slipped from his fingers on to the floor, whilst he sat staring at the white tablecloth in front of him. But no sooner did Harold Jupp at his side make a movement to pick the paper up than Sir Chichester swooped down upon it in a flash.

"No!" he said. "No!" and he began to fold it up very carefully. "It's as Millie says, a rather intolerable invention which has crept into the social news. I must consider what steps we should take."

There was another at that table who was as disturbed as Sir Chichester and Lady Splay. Martin Hillyard knew nothing of the paragraph which had caused this consternation in his hosts; and he had asked no questions last night. But he remembered every word that Joan had said. She had seen Mario Escobar somewhere since leaving Rackham Park—that was certain; and Mario Escobar had demanded information. "Demanded" was the word which Joan had used. Mario Escobar was of the blackmailing type. Martin's heart was in his mouth.

"An invention about us here?" he asked.

"About one of us," answered Sir Chichester; and Martin dared ask no more.

Harry Luttrell, however, had none of Martin's knowledge to restrain him.

"In that case, sir, wouldn't it be wiser to read it now, aloud?" he suggested. "It can't be suppressed now. Sooner or later every one will hear of it."

Every one agreed except Hillyard. To him Harry Luttrell seemed wilfully to be rushing towards catastrophe.

"Yes ... yes," said Sir Chichester slowly. He unfolded his newspaper again and read; and of all those who listened no one was more amazed than Hillyard himself. Mario Escobar had no hand in this abominable work. For this is what Sir Chichester read:

"'A mysterious and tragic event has occurred at Rackham Park, where Sir Chichester Splay, the well-known Baronet——'" He broke off to observe, "Really, it's put quite civilly, Millie. It's a dreadful mistake, but so far as the wording of the Editor is concerned it's put really more considerately than I noticed at first."

"Oh, please go on," cried Millie.

"Very well, my dear," and he resumed—"where Sir Chichester Splay, the well-known Baronet is entertaining a small party. At an early hour this morning Mrs. Croyle, one of Sir Chichester's guests, died under strange circumstances."

Miranda uttered a little scream.

"Died!" she exclaimed.

"Yes, listen to this," said Sir Chichester. "Mrs. Croyle was discovered lying upon her side with her face bent above a glass of chloroform. The glass was supported between her pillows and Mrs. Croyle's fingers were still grasping it when she was discovered."

A gasp of indignation and horror ran round that breakfast table when Sir Chichester had finished.

"It's so atrociously circumstantial," said Mr. Albany Todd.

"Yes." Sir Chichester seized upon the point. "That's the really damnable point about it. That's real malice. This report will linger and live long after the denial and apology are published."

Lady Splay raised her head.

"I can't imagine who can have sent in such a cowardly lie. Enemies of us? Or enemies of Stella?"

"We can think that out afterwards, Lady Splay," said Harold Jupp. He was of a practical matter-of-fact mind and every one turned to listen to his suggestion. "The first thing to do is to get the report contradicted in the evening papers."

"Of course."

There was something to be done. All grasped at the doing of it in sheer relief—except one. For as the men rose, saying; one "I'll look after it"; and another "No, you'd better leave it to me," Luttrell's voice broke in upon them all, with a sort of dreadful fatality in the quiet sound of it.

"Where is Mrs. Croyle now?" he asked, and he was as white as the tablecloth in front of him.

There was no further movement towards the door. Slowly the men resumed their seats. A silence followed in which person after person looked at Stella's empty place as though an intensity of gaze would materialise her there. Miranda was the first bravely to break through it.

"She hasn't come down yet," she said, and Millie Splay seized upon the words.

"No, she never comes down for breakfast—never has all this week."

"Yes, that's true," returned Dennis Brown with an attempt at cheerfulness.

"Besides—what makes—the idea—impossible," said Sir Chichester, "is the publication this morning. There wouldn't have been time.... It's clearly an atrocious piece of malice." He was speaking with an obvious effort to convince himself that the monstrous thing was false. But he collapsed suddenly and once more discomfort and silence reigned in the room.

"Stella's not well," Millie Splay took up the tale. "That's why she is seldom seen before twelve. Those headaches of hers——" and suddenly she in her turn broke off. She leaned forward and pressed the electric bell upon the tablecloth beside her. That small trivial action brought its relief, lightened the vague cloud of misgiving which since Luttrell had spoken, had settled upon all.

"You rang, my lady," said Harper in the doorway.

"Yes, Harper. We were making some plans for a picnic to-day and we should like to know if Mrs. Croyle will join us. Can you find out from her maid whether she is awake?"

It was superbly done. There was not a quaver in Lady Splay's voice, not a sign of agitation in her manner.

"I'll inquire, my lady," replied Harper, and he left the room upon his errand.

"One thing is certain," Mr. Albany Todd broke in. "I was watching Harper over your shoulder, Lady Splay. He hasn't seen the paragraph. There's nothing known of it in the servants' hall."

Sir Chichester nodded, and Millie Splay observed:

"Harper's so imperturbable that he always inspires me with confidence. I feel that nothing out of the way could really happen whilst he was in the house." And her attitude of tension did greatly relax as she thought, illogically enough, of that stolid butler. A suggestion made by Martin Hillyard set them to work whilst they waited.

"Let us see if the report is in any of the other papers," and all immediately were busy with that examination—except one again. And that one again, Harry Luttrell. He sat in his place motionless, his eyes transfixed upon some vision of horror—as if he knew, Martin said to himself, yes, as if all these questions were futile, as if he knew.

But no other newspaper had printed the paragraph. They had hardly assured themselves of this fact, when Harper once more stood in the doorway.

"Mrs. Croyle gave orders last night to her maid that she was not to be disturbed until she rang, my lady," he said.

"And she has not rung?" Millie asked.

"No, my lady."

Miranda suddenly laughed in an odd fashion and swayed in her chair.

"Miranda!" Millie Splay brought her back to her self-control with a sharp cry of rebuke. Then she resumed to Harper.

"I will take the responsibility of waking Mrs. Croyle. Will you please, ask her maid to rouse Mrs. Croyle, and inquire whether she will join us this morning. We shall start at twelve."

"Very well, my lady."

There was no longer any pretence of ease amongst the people seated round the table. A queer panic passed from one to the other. They were awed by the imminence of dreadful uncomprehended things. They waited in silence, like people under a spell, and from somewhere in the house above their heads, there sounded a loud rapping upon a door. They held their breath, straining to hear the grate of a key in a lock, and the opening of that door. They heard only the knocking repeated and repeated again. It was followed by a sound of hurrying feet.

Jenny Prask ran down the great main staircase, and burst into the breakfast room, her face mottled with terror, her hand spread above her heart to still its wild beating.

"My lady! My lady! The door's locked. I can get no answer. I am afraid."

Sir Chichester rose abruptly from his chair. But Jenny Prask had more to say.

"The key had been removed. My lady, I looked through the keyhole. The lights are still burning in the room."

"Oh!"

Martin Hillyard had started to his feet. He remembered another time when the lights had been burning in Stella Croyle's room in the full blaze of a summer morning. She was sitting at the writing-table then. She had been sitting there all through the night making meaningless signs and figures upon the paper and the blotting-pad in front of her. The full significance of that flight of the unhappy Stella to the little hotel below the Hog's Back was now revealed to him. But between that morning and this, there was an enormous difference. She had opened her door then in answer to the knocking.

"We must get through that door, Lady Splay," he said. Sir Chichester was already up and about in a busy agitation.

"Yes, to be sure. It's just an ordinary lock. We shall easily find a key to fit it. I'll take Harper with me, and perhaps, Millie, you will come."

"Yes, I'll come," said Millie quietly. After her first shock of horror and surprise when she had first chanced upon the paragraph in the Harpoon, she had been completely, wonderfully, mistress of herself.

"The rest of you will please stay downstairs," said Sir Chichester, as he removed the key from the door of the room. Jenny Prask was not thus to be disposed of.

"Oh, my lady, I must go up too!" she cried, twisting her hands together. "Mrs. Croyle was always very kind to me, poor lady. I must come!"

"She won't keep her head," Sir Chichester objected, who was fast losing his. But Milly Splay laid her hand upon the girl's arm.

"Yes, you shall come with us, Jenny," she said gently, and the four of them moved out of the room.

The others followed them as far as the hall, and stood grouped at the foot of the staircase.

"Miranda, would you like to go out into the air?" Dennis Brown asked with solicitude of his wife.

"No, dear, I am all right. I—oh, poor woman!" and with a sob she dropped her face in her hands.

"Hush!" Luttrell called sharply for silence, and a moment afterwards, a loud shrill scream rent the air like lightning.

Miranda cowered from it.

"Jenny Prask!" said Hillyard.

"Then—then—the news is true," faltered Miranda, and she would have fallen but for the arm of her husband about her waist.

They waited until Sir Chichester came down the stairs to them. He was shaken and trembling. He, the spectator of dramas, was now a character in one most tragically enacted under his own roof.

"The report is true to the letter," he said in a low voice. "Dennis, will you go for McKerrel, the doctor. You know his house in Midhurst. Will you take your car, and bring him back. There is nothing more that we can do until he comes." He stood for a little while by the table in the hall, staring down at it, and taking particular note of its grain.

"A curious thing," he said. "The key of her room is missing altogether."

To no one did it come at this moment that the disappearance of the key was to prove a point of vast importance. No one made any comment, and Sir Chichester fell to silence again. "She looked like a child sleeping," he said at length, "a child without a care."

Then he sat down and took the newspaper from his pocket. Mr. Albany Todd suddenly advanced to Harry Luttrell. He had been no less observant than Martin Hillyard.

"You alone, Colonel Luttrell," he said, "were not surprised."

"I was not," answered Harry frankly. "I was shocked, but not surprised. For I knew Mrs. Croyle at a time when she was so tormented that she could not sleep at all. During that time she learnt to take drugs, and especially that drug in precisely that way that the newspaper described."

The men drifted out of the hall on to the lawn, leaving Sir Chichester brooding above the outspread sheets of the Harpoon. Here was the insoluble sinister question to which somehow he had to find an answer. Stella Croyle died late last night, in the country, at Rackham Park; and yet in this very morning's issue of the newspaper, her death with every circumstance and detail was truthfully recorded, hours before it was even known by anybody in the house itself.

"How can that be?" Sir Chichester exclaimed in despair. "How can it be?"

Stella, the undisciplined! She had flung out of the rank and file, as long ago Sir Charles Hardiman had put it, and to this end she had come, waywardness exacting its inexorable price. Harry Luttrell, however, was not able to lull his conscience with any such easy reflections. He walked with Martin Hillyard apart in the garden.

"I am to blame," he cried. "I took on a responsibility for Stella when I went out of my way to do one kind, foolish thing.... Yet, she would have killed herself if I hadn't—as she has done five years afterwards!... I couldn't leave her when I had brought her home ... she was in such misery!... and it couldn't have gone on.... Old Hardiman was right about that.... It would have ended in a quarrel when unforgivable words would have been used.... Yet, perhaps, if that had happened she wouldn't have killed herself.... Oh, I don't know!"

Martin Hillyard had never seen Harry Luttrell so moved or sunk in such remorse. He did not argue, lest he should but add fuel to this high flame of self-reproach. Life had become so much easier as a problem with him, so much inner probing and speculation and worry about small vanities had been smoothed away since he had been engaged day after day in a definite service which was building up by a law deduced here, an inspired formula there, a tradition for its servants. The service, the tradition, would dissolve and blow to nothing, when peace came again. Meanwhile there was the worth of traditional service made clear to him, in an indifference to the little enmities which before would have hurt and rankled, in a freedom from doubt when decision was needed, above all in a sort of underlying calm which strengthened as his life became more turbulently active.

"It's a clear principle of life which make the difference," he said, hesitating, because to say even so much made him feel a prig. "Stella just drifted from unhappiness to unhappiness——"

But Harry Luttrell had no attention to give to him.

"I simply couldn't have gone on," he cried. "It wasn't a question of my ruin or not.... It was simply beyond me to go on.... There were other things more powerful.... You know! I once told you on the river above Kennington Island.... Oh, my God, I am in such a tangle of argument—and there she is up there—only thirty, and beautiful—such a queer, wayward kid—'like a child sleeping.'"

He quoted Sir Chichester's phrase, and hurried away from his friend.

"I shall be back in a little while," he muttered. His bad hour was upon him, and he must wrestle with it alone.

Martin Hillyard returned to the hall, and found Sir Chichester with the doctor, a short, rugged Scotsman. Dr. McKerrel was saying:

"There's nothing whatever for me to do, Sir Chichester," he said. "The poor creature must have died somewhere about one o'clock of the morning." He saw Sir Chichester with a start fall once more to reading the paragraph in the Harpoon, and continued with a warmth of admiration, "Eh, but those newspaper fellows are quick! I saw the Harpoon this morning, and it was lucky I did. For I'd ha' been on my rounds otherwise when that young fellow called for me."

"It was good of you to come so quickly," said Sir Chichester.

"I shall charge for it," replied Dr. McKerrel. "I'll just step round to the Peace Officer at once, and I'll be obliged if you'll not have that glass with the chloroform touched again. I have put it aside."

Martin Hillyard was disturbed.

"There will have to be an inquest then?" he asked.

"Aye, but there wull."

"In a case of this kind," Sir Chichester suggested, "it would be better if it could be avoided."

"But it can't," answered Dr. McKerrel bluntly. "And for my part, I tell you frankly, Sir Chichester, I have no great pity for poor neurotic bodies like the young lady upstairs. If she had had a little of my work to do, she would have been too tired in the evening to think about her worries." He looked at the disconsolate Baronet with a sudden twinkle in his eye. "Eh, man, but you'll get all the publicity you want over this case."

Sir Chichester had no rejoinder to the quip; and his unwonted meekness caused McKerrel to relent. He stopped at the door, and said:

"I'll give you a hint. The coroner can cut the inquest down to the barest necessary limits, if he has got all the facts clear beforehand. If he has got to explore in the dark, he'll ask questions here and questions there, and you never know, nor does he, what he's going to drag out to light in the end. But let him have it all clear and straight first! There's only one character I know of, more free from regulations and limitations and red-tape than a coroner, and that's the police-sergeant who runs the coroner. Goodday to you."

A telegram was brought to Martin Hillyard whilst McKerrel was yet speaking; and Hillyard read it with relief. Mario Escobar had been taken that morning as he was leaving the hotel for the morning train to London. He was now on his way to an internment camp. So that complication was smoothed out at all events. He agreed with Sir Chichester Splay that it would be prudent to carry out McKerrel's suggestion at once.

"I will make the document out," said Sir Chichester importantly. Give him a little work which set him in the limelight as the leader of the Chorus, and nothing could keep down his spirits. He took a sheet of foolscap, a blotting pad, a heavy inkstand, and a quill pen—Sir Chichester never used anything but a quill pen—to the big table in the middle of the hall, and wrote in a fair, round hand:

"The case of Mrs. Croyle."

and looked at his work and thought it good.

"It looks quite like a cause célèbre, doesn't it?" he said buoyantly. But he caught Martin Hillyard's eye, and recovered his more becoming despondency. Harry Luttrell came in as the baronet settled once more to his task. He laid a shining key upon the table and said:

"I found this upon the lawn. It looked as if it might be the key of Mrs. Croyle's room."

It was undoubtedly the key of a door. "We'll find out," said the baronet. Harper was sent for and commissioned to inquire. He returned in a few minutes.

"Yes, sir, it is the key of Mrs. Croyle's room." He laid it upon the table and went out of the room.

"I suppose it is then," said Harry Luttrell. "But I am a little puzzled."

"Oh?"

"It wasn't lying beneath Mrs. Croyle's window as one might have expected. But at the east side of the house, below the corridor, and almost in front of the glass door of the library."

Both of his hearers were disturbed. Sir Chichester took up the key, and twisted it this way and that, till it flashed like a point of fire in the sunlight; as though under such giddy work it would yield up its secret for the sake of peace. He flung it on the table again, where it rattled and lay still.

"I can't make head or tail of it," Sir Chichester cried. Martin Hillyard opened his mouth to speak and thought better of it. He could not falter in his belief that Stella had destroyed herself. The picture of her that morning in Surrey, with the lamps burning in her room and the bed untouched, was too vivid in his memory. What she had tried to do two years ago, she had found the courage to do to-day.

That was sure. But it was not all. There was some one in the shadows who meant harm, more harm than was already accomplished. There was malevolence at work. The discovery of the key in that position far from Stella's window assured him of it. The aspect of the key itself as it lay upon the table made the assurance still more sure. But whom was this malevolence to hurt? And how? At what moment would the hand behind the curtain strike? And whose hand would it be? These were questions which locked his lips tight. It was for him to watch and discover, for he alone overlooked the battle-field, and if he failed, God help his friends at Rackham Park. Mario Escobar? Mario Escobar could at all events do no harm now.

Sir Chichester explained to Harry Luttrell Dr. McKerrel's suggestion.

"Just a clear, succinct statement of the facts. The witnesses, and what each one knows and is ready to depose. I shall put the statement before the coroner, who is a very good fellow, and we shall escape with as little scandal as possible. Now, let me see——" Sir Chichester put on his glasses. "The most important witness, of course, will be Stella's maid."

Sir Chichester rang the bell, and in answer to his summons Jenny came down the stairs. Her eyes were red with weeping and she was very pale. But she bore herself steadily.

"You wanted me, sir?" she asked. Her eyes travelled from one to the other of the three men in the hall. They rested for a little moment longer upon Harry Luttrell than upon the rest; and it seemed to Hillyard that as they rested there they glittered strangely, and that the ghost of a smile flickered about her mouth.

"Yes," said Sir Chichester, pompously. "You understand that there will have to be an inquiry into the cause of Mrs. Croyle's death; and one wants for the sake of everybody, your dead mistress more than any one, that there should be as little talk as possible."

Jenny's voice cut in like ice.

"Mrs. Croyle had no reason that I know of to fear the fullest inquiry."

"Quite so! Quite so!" returned Sir Chichester, shifting his ground. "But it will save time if we get the facts concisely together."

Jenny stepped forward, and stood at the end of the table opposite to the baronet.

"I am quite willing, sir," she said respectfully, "to answer any question now or at any time"; and throughout the little interrogatory which followed she never once changed from her attitude of respect.

"Your name first."

"Jenny Prask," and Sir Chichester wrote it down.

"You have been Mrs. Croyle's maid for some time."

"For three and a half years, sir."

"Good!" said Sir Chichester, with the air of one who by an artful question has elicited a most important piece of evidence.

"Now!" But now he fumbled. He had come to the real examination, and was at a loss how to begin. "Yes, now then, Jenny!" and again he came to a halt.

Whilst Jenny waited, her eyes once glittered strangely under their half-dropped lids; and Martin Hillyard followed the direction of their gaze to the door-key lying upon the table beside Sir Chichester's hand.

"Jenny," said Sir Chichester, who had at last formulated a question. "You informed us that Mrs. Croyle instructed you last night not to call her until she rang. That, no doubt, was an unusual order for her to give."

"No, sir."

Sir Chichester leaned back in his chair.

"Oh, it wasn't?"

"No, sir."

Sir Chichester looked a little blank. He cast about for another line of examination.

"You are aware, of course, Jenny, that your mistress was in the habit of taking drugs—chloroform especially."

"Never, sir," answered Jenny.

"You weren't aware of it?" exclaimed Sir Chichester.

"She never took them."

Harry Luttrell made a little movement. He stared in perplexity at Jenny Prask, who did not once remove her calm and respectful eyes from Sir Chichester Splay. She waited in absolute composure for the next question. But the question took a long time to formulate. Sir Chichester had framed no interrogatory in a sequence; whereas Jenny's answers were pat, as though, sitting by the bed whereon her dead mistress lay, she had thought out the questions which might be asked of her and got her answers ready. Sir Chichester began to get flurried. At every conjecture which he expressed, Jenny Prask slammed a door in his face.

"But you told me——" he cried, turning to Harry Luttrell and so broke off. "Are you speaking the truth, Jenny?"

Suddenly Jenny's composure broke up. The blood rushed into her face. She shouted violently:

"I swear it! If it was my last dying word, I do! Chloroform indeed!" She became sarcastic. "What an idea! Just fancy!"

Sir Chichester threw down his pen. He was aghast before the conclusion to which his examination was leading him.

"But, if Stella didn't put that glass of chloroform between her pillows—herself—of her own accord—why then, whilst she was asleep——" He would not utter the inevitable induction. But it was clear enough, hideous enough to all of them. Why then, whilst she was asleep, some one entered the room, placed the chloroform where its deadly fumes would do their work, locked her door upon her and tossed the key out on to the lawn. A charge of murder—nothing less.

"Don't you see what you are suggesting, Jenny," Sir Chichester spluttered helplessly.

"I am suggesting nothing, sir," the maid answered stolidly. "I am answering questions."

She was lying, of course! Hillyard had not a doubt of it. Jenny Prask was the malevolent force of which he was in search. So much had, at all events, sprung clear from Sir Chichester's blunderings. And some hint, too, of the plan which malevolence had formed—not more than a hint! That Jenny Prask intended to sustain a charge of murder Martin did not believe. She was of too strong a brain for that folly. But she had some clear purpose to harm somebody; and Martin's heart sank as he conjectured who that some one might, nay must, be. Meanwhile, he thought, let Sir Chichester pursue his questioning. He got glimpses through that clouded medium into Jenny Prask's mind.

"You must realise, Jenny, the unfortunate position into which your answers are leading you," said Sir Chichester with a trace of bluster.

Hillyard could have laughed. As if she didn't realise exactly the drift and meaning of every word which she uttered. Jenny was not at all perturbed by Sir Chichester's manner. Her face took on a puzzled look.

"I don't understand, sir."

"No? Let me make it clear! If your mistress never took drugs, if she did not place the glass of chloroform in the particular position which would ensure her death, then, since you, her maid, were alone in this part of the house with her and were the last person to see her alive——"

"No, sir," Jenny Prask interrupted.

Sir Chichester stared. He was more and more out of his depth, and these were waters in which expert swimming was required.

"I don't understand. Do you say that somebody saw Mrs. Croyle after she had dismissed you for the night?"

"Yes, sir."

"Will you please explain?"

The explanation was as simple as possible. Jenny had first fetched a book for her mistress from the library, before the house-party left for the ball. She then had supper and went to Mrs. Croyle's room. It was then about half-past nine, so far as she could conjecture. Her mistress, however, was not ready for bed, and dismissed Jenny, saying that she would look after herself. Jenny thereupon retired to her own bedroom and wrote a letter. After writing it, she remembered that she had not put out the distilled water which Mrs. Croyle was in the habit of using for her toilet. She accordingly returned to Mrs. Croyle's bedroom, and to her surprise found it empty. She waited for a quarter of an hour, and then becoming uneasy, went downstairs into the hall. She heard her mistress and some one else talking in the library. Their voices were raised a little as though they were quarrelling.

"Quarrelling!" Sir Chichester Splay cried out the word in dismay. His hand flapped feebly on the table. "I am afraid to go on.... What do you think, Hillyard? I am afraid to go on...."

"We must go on," said Luttrell quietly. He was very white. Did he guess what was coming, Hillyard wondered? At all events he did not falter. He took the business of putting questions altogether out of his host's hands.

"Was the somebody a man or a woman?"

"A woman, sir."

"Did you recognise her voice?"

"Yes, sir."

"Who was it?"

"Miss Whitworth."

Harry Luttrell nodded his head as if he had, during these last minutes, come to expect that answer and no other. But Sir Chichester rose up in wrath and, leaning forward over the table, shook his finger threateningly at the girl.

"Now you know you are not speaking the truth. Miss Whitworth was at Harrel last night with the rest of us."

"Yes, sir, but she came back to Rackham Park almost at once," said Jenny; and Harry Luttrell's face showed a sign of anxiety. After all, he hadn't seen Joan himself in the ball-room until well after ten o'clock. "I should have known that it was Miss Whitworth even if I had not heard her voice," and Jenny described how, on fetching Mrs. Croyle's book, she had seen Joan unlatch the glass door of the library.

Sir Chichester was shaken, but he pushed his blotting-paper here and his pen there, and pished and tushed like a refractory child.

"And how did she get back? I suppose she ran all the way in her satin shoes and back again, eh?"

"No, sir, she came back in Mrs. Brown's motor-car. I saw it from my bedroom window waiting in the drive."

"Ah! Now that we can put to the test, Jenny," cried Sir Chichester triumphantly. "And we will——" He caught Hillyard's eye as he moved towards the door in order to summon Miranda from the garden. Hillyard warned him with an almost imperceptible shake of the head. "Yes, we will, in our own time," he concluded lamely. His anger burst out again. "Joan, indeed! We won't have her mixed up in this sordid business, it's bad enough as it is. But Joan, no! To suggest that Joan came straight back from the Willoughbys' dance in order to quarrel with a woman whom she was seeing every day here, and, having quarrelled with her, afterwards—— No, I won't speak the word. It's preposterous!"

"But I don't suggest, sir, that Miss Whitworth came back in order to quarrel with my mistress," Jenny Prask returned, as soon as Sir Chichester's spate of words ran down. "I only give you the facts I know. I am quite sure that Miss Whitworth can quite easily explain why she came back to Rackham Park last night. There can't be any difficulty about that!"

Jenny Prask had kept every intonation of her voice under her control. There was no hint of irony or triumph. She was a respectful lady's maid, frankly answering questions about her dead mistress. But she did not so successfully keep sentinel over her looks. She could not but glance from time to time at Harry Luttrell savouring his trouble and anxiety; and when she expressed her conviction that Joan could so easily clear up these mysteries, such a flame of hatred burnt suddenly in her eyes that it lit Martin Hillyard straight to the heart of her purpose.

"So that's it," he thought, and was terrified as he grasped its reach. An accusation of murder! Oh, nothing so crude. But just enough suggestion of the possibility of murder to make it absolutely necessary that Joan Whitworth should go into the witness box at the coroner's inquest and acknowledge before the world that she had hurried secretly back from Harrel to meet Mario Escobar in an empty house. Mario Escobar too! Of all people, Mario Escobar! Jenny Prask had builded better than she knew. That telegram which Martin had welcomed with so much relief but an hour ago taunted him now. The scandal would have been bad enough if Mario Escobar were nothing more than the shady hunter of women he was supposed to be. It would be ten times louder now that Mario Escobar had been interned as a traitor within twelve hours of the secret meeting!

Some escape must be discovered from the peril. Else the mud of it would cling to Joan all her life. She would be spoilt. Harry Luttrell, too! If he married her, if he did not. But Martin could not think of a way out. The whole plan was an artful, devilish piece of hard-headed cunning. Martin fell to wondering where was Jenny Prask's weak joint. She certainly looked, with her quiet strength, as if she had not one at all.

To make matters worse, Miranda Brown chose this moment to re-enter the hall. Sir Chichester, warned already by Martin, threw the warning to the winds.

"Miranda, you are the very person to help us," he cried. "Now listen to me, my dear, and don't get flurried. Think carefully, for your answer may have illimitable consequences! After your arrival at Harrel last night, did Joan return here immediately in your car?"

Sir Chichester had never been so impressive. Miranda was frightened and changed colour. But she had given her promise and she kept it pluckily.

"No," she answered.

Jenny Prask permitted herself to smile her disbelief. Sir Chichester was triumphant.

"Well, there's an end of your pretty story, my girl," he said. "You wanted to do a little mischief, did you? Well, you haven't! And here, by a stroke of luck, is Joan herself to settle the matter."

He sat down and once more he drew his sheet of foolscap in front of him. He could write his clear succinct statement now, write it in "nervous prose." He was not quite sure what nervous prose actually was, but he knew it to be the correct medium to use on these occasions.

Meanwhile Joan ran down the stairs.

"I am afraid I have been very lazy this morning," she cried. She saw Harry Luttrell, she coloured to the eyes, she smiled doubtfully and said in a little whimsical voice, "We didn't after all, practise in the passage."

Then, and only then, did she realise that something was amiss. Millie Splay in her desire to spare her darling the sudden shock of learning what calamity had befallen the house that night had bidden Joan's maid keep silence. She herself would break the news. But Millie Splay was busy with telegrams to Robert Croyle and Stella's own friends, and all the sad little duties which wait on death; and Joan ran down into the midst of the debate without a warning.

Martin Hillyard would have given it to her, but Sir Chichester was hot upon his report.

"Joan, my dear," he said confidently. "There's a little point—not in dispute really—but—well there's a little point. It has been said that you came straight back here last night from Harrel?"

Joan's face turned slowly white. She stood with her great eyes fixed upon Sir Chichester, still as an image, and she did not answer a word. Harry Luttrell drew in a quick breath like a man in pain. Sir Chichester was selecting a new pen and noticed nothing.

"It's ridiculous, of course, my dear, but I must put to you the formal question. Did you?"

"Yes," answered Joan, and the pen fell from Sir Chichester's hand.

"But—but—how did you come back?"

"I borrowed Miranda's car."

Miranda's legs gave under her and she sank down with a moan in a chair.

"But Miranda denies that she lent it," said Sir Chichester in exasperation.

"I asked her to deny it."

"Why?"

Joan's eyes for one swift instant swept round to Harry Luttrell. She swayed. Then she answered:

"I can't tell you."

Sir Chichester rose to his feet and tore his sheet of foolscap across.

"God bless my soul!" he said to himself rather than to any of that company. "God bless my soul!" He moved away from the table. "I think I'll go and see Millie. Yes! I'll consult with Millie," and he ascended the stairs heavily, a very downcast and bewildered man. It seemed as though old age had suddenly found him out, and bowed his shoulders and taken the spring from his limbs. Something of this he felt himself, for he was heard to mutter as he passed along the landing to his wife's sitting-room:

"I am not the man I was. I feel difficulties more"; and so he passed from sight.

Harry Luttrell turned then to Joan.

"Miss Whitworth," he began and got no further. For the blood rushed up into the girl's face and she exclaimed in a trembling voice:

"Colonel Luttrell, I trust that you are not going to ask me any questions."

"Why?" he asked, taken aback by the little touch of violence in her manner.

"Because, at twelve o'clock last night, I refused you the right to ask them."

The words were not very generous. They were meant to hurt and they did. They were meant to put a sharp, quick end to any questioning; and in that, too, they succeeded. Harry Luttrell bowed his head in assent and went out into the garden. For a moment afterwards Martin Hillyard, Joan and Jenny Prask stood in silence; and in that silence once more Martin's eyes fell upon the key of Stella's room. The earth had moved since the interrogatory had begun and the sunlight now played upon the key and transmuted it into a bright jewel. Martin Hillyard stepped forward and lifted it up. A faint, a very faint light, as from the far end of a long tunnel began to glimmer in his mind.

"I must think it out," he whispered to himself; and at once the key filled all his thoughts. He turned to Joan:

"Will you watch, please?" He opened the drawer in the table and laid the key inside it. Then he closed the drawer and locked it and took the key of the drawer out of the lock.

"You see, Joan, what I have done? That key is locked in this drawer, and I hold the key of the drawer. It may be important."

Joan nodded.

"I see what you have done. And now, will you please leave me with Jenny Prask?"

The smile was very easy to read now in Jenny's face. She could ask nothing better than to be left alone with Joan.

Martin hesitated.

"I think, Joan, that you ought to see Lady Splay before you talk to any one," he counselled gently.

"Is everybody going to give me orders in this house?" Joan retorted with a quiet, dangerous calm.

Martin Hillyard turned and ran swiftly up the stairs. There was but one thing to do. Lady Splay must be fetched down. But hurry as he might, he was not in time. For a few seconds Joan and Jenny Prask were alone in the hall, and all Jenny's composure left her on the instant. She stepped quickly over to Joan, and in a voice vibrating with hatred and passion, she hissed:

"But you'll have to say why you came back. You'll have to say who you came back to see. You'll have to say it publicly too—right there in court. It'll be in all the papers. Won't you like it, Miss Whitworth? Just fancy!"

Joan was staggered by the attack. The sheer hatred of Jenny bewildered her.

"In court?" she faltered. "What do you mean?"

"That Mrs. Croyle died of poison last night in her room," answered Jenny.

Joan stared at her. "Last night, after we had talked—she killed herself—oh!" The truth reached her brain and laid a chill hand upon her heart. She rocked backwards and forwards as she stood, and with a gasping moan fell headlong to the ground. She had fainted. For a little while Jenny surveyed her handiwork with triumph. She bent down with a laugh.

"Yes, it's your turn, you pretty doll. You've got to go through it! You won't look so young and pretty when they have done with you in the witness-box. Bah!"

Jenny Prask was a strenuous hater. She drew back her foot to kick the unconscious girl as she lay at her feet upon the floor. But that insult Millie Splay was in time to prevent.

"Jenny," she cried sharply from the balustrade of the landing.

Jenny was once more the quiet, respectful maid.

"Yes, my lady. You want me? I am afraid that Miss Whitworth has fainted."

Upon that house which had yesterday rung with joyous life now fell gloom and sorrow and grave disquiet. Millie Splay drew Miranda, Dennis Brown and Harold Jupp aside.

"You three had better go," she said. "You have such a little time for holidays now; and I can always telegraph for you if you should be wanted."

Miranda bubbled into little sympathetic explosions.

"Oh, Millie, I'll stay, of course. These boys can go. But Joan will want some one."

Millie, however, would not hear of it.

"You're a brick, Miranda. But I have ordered the car for you all immediately after luncheon. Joan's in bed, and wants to see no one. She seems heartbroken. She will say nothing. I can't understand her."

There was only one at Rackham Park who did, and to him Millie Splay turned instinctively.

"I should like you to stay, if you will put up with us. I think Chichester feels at a loss, and he likes you very much."

"Of course I'll stay," replied Hillyard.

Mr. Albany Todd drifted away to the more congenial atmosphere of a dowager duchess's dower-house in the Highlands, where it is to be hoped that his conversational qualities were more brilliantly displayed than in the irreverent gaiety of Rackham. Millie Splay meant to keep Harry Luttrell too. She hoped against hope. This was the man for her Joan, and whether he was wasting his leave miserably in that melancholy house troubled her not one jot.

"It would be so welcome to me if you would put off your departure," she said. "I am sure there is some dreadful misunderstanding."

Luttrell consented willingly to stay, and they went into the library, where Sir Chichester was brooding over the catastrophe with his head in his hands and the copy of the Harpoon on the floor beside him.

"No, I can't make head or tail of it," he said, and Harper the butler came softly into the room, closing the door from the hall.

"There's a reporter from the West Sussex Advertiser, sir, asking to see you," he said, and Sir Chichester raised his head, like an old hunter which hears a pack of hounds giving tongue in the distance.

"Where is he?"

"In the hall, sir."

The baronet's head sank again between his shoulders.

"Tell him that I can't see him," he said in a dull voice.

The butler was the only man in the room who could hear that pronouncement with an unmoved face, and he owed his imperturbability merely to professional pride. Indeed, it was almost unthinkable that a couple of hours could produce so vast a revolution in a man. Here was a reporter who had come, without being asked, to interview Sir Chichester Splay, and the baronet would not see him! The incongruity struck Sir Chichester himself.

"Perhaps it will seem rather impolite, eh, Luttrell? Rather hard treatment on a man who has come so far? What do you think, Hillyard? I suppose I ought to see him for a moment—yes." Sir Chichester raised his voice in a sharp cry which contrasted vividly with the deliberative sentences preceding it. "Harper! Harper!" and Harper reappeared. "I have been thinking about it, Harper. The unfortunate man may lose his whole morning if I don't see him. We all agree that to send him away would be unkind."

"He has gone, sir."

"Gone?" exclaimed Sir Chichester testily. "God bless my soul! Did he seem disappointed, Harper?"

"Not so much disappointed, sir, as, if I may utilise a vulgarism, struck of all a heap, sir."

"That will do, Harper," said Millie Splay, and Harper again retired.

"Struck all of a heap!" said Sir Chichester sadly. "Well he might be!" He looked up and caught Harry's eye. "They say, Luttrell, that breaking a habit is only distressing during the first few days. With each refusal of the mind to yield, the temptation diminishes in strength. I believe that to be so, Luttrell."

"It is very likely, sir," Harry replied.

Harper seemed to be perpetually in and out of the library that morning. For he appeared with a little oblong parcel in his hand. Sir Chichester did not notice the parcel. He sprang up, and with a distinct note of eager pleasure in his voice, he cried:

"He has come back! Then I really think——"

"No, sir," Harper interrupted. "These are cigarettes."

"Oh, yes," Hillyard stepped forward and took the parcel from the table. "I had run out, so I sent to Midhurst for a box."

"Oh, cigarettes!" Sir Chichester's voice sagged again. He contemplated the little parcel swinging by a loop of string from Martin's finger. His face became a little stern. "That's a bad habit, Hillyard," he observed, shaking his head. "It will grow on you—nicotine poisoning may supervene at any moment. You had better begin to break yourself of it at once. I think so."

"Chichester!" cried Millie Splay. "What in the world are you doing?"

Sir Chichester was gently but firmly removing the parcel from Martin's hands, whilst Martin himself looked on, paralysed by the aggression.

"A little strength of character, Hillyard.... You saw me a minute ago.... The first few days, I believe, are trying."

Martin sought to retrieve his cigarettes, but Sir Chichester laid them aside upon a high mantelpiece, as if Hillyard were a child and could not reach them.

"No, don't disappoint me, Hillyard! I am sure that you, too, can rise above a temptation. Why should I be the only one?"

But Hillyard did not answer. Sir Chichester's desire that he should have a companion in sacrifice set a train of thought working in his mind. In the hurry and horror of that morning something had been forgotten—something of importance, something which perhaps, together with the key locked away in the hall table, might set free Joan's feet from the net in which they were entangled. He looked at his watch.

"Will you lend me your car, Harry, for a few hours?" he asked suddenly.

"Yes."

"Then I'll go," said Martin. "I will be back this afternoon or evening, Lady Splay." He went to the door, but was delayed by a box of Corona cigars upon a small table. "I'll take one of your cigars, Sir Chichester," he said drily.

"Anything in the house, of course, my boy," began the baronet hospitably, and pulled himself up. "A very bad habit, Hillyard. You disappoint me."

A trick of secrecy grows quickly upon men doing the work to which Martin Hillyard had been assigned during the last two years. Nothing is easier than to reach a frame of mind which drives you about with your finger to your lips, whispering "Hush! hush!" over the veriest trifles. Hillyard had not reached that point, but, like many other persons of his service, he was on the way to it. He gave no information now to any one of his purpose or destination, not even to Millie Splay, who came out with him alone into the hall, yearning for some crumb of hope. All that he said to her was:

"It is possible that I may be later than I think; but I shall certainly be back to-night." And he drove off in Luttrell's powerful small car.

It was, in fact, ten o'clock when Hillyard returned to Rackham Park. There was that in his manner which encouraged the inmates to hope some way out had been discovered. Questions were poured upon him, and some information given. The date of the inquest had been fixed for the next Monday, and meanwhile no statement of any kind had been put before the coroner. Jenny had not yielded by an inch. She would certainly tell her story with all the convincing force behind it of her respectful quiet manner and her love for her mistress.

"I have something to tell you," said Martin. "But I have had no dinner, and am starving. I will tell you whilst I eat."

"Shall I fetch Joan down?" Millie Splay asked eagerly.

"Better to wait," said Martin. He imagined in what a fever of anxiety Joan would be. It would be time enough to lift her to hope when it was certain that the hope would not crumble away to dust.

Joan was at that moment lying on her bed in the darkness of her room, her face towards the moonlit garden, and such a terror of the ordeal to be faced the next Monday in her thoughts as turned her cold and sent her heart fluttering into her throat. Mario Escobar had been taken away that morning. The news had reached Rackham, as it had reached every other house in the country-side. Joan knew of it, and she felt soiled and humiliated beyond endurance as she thought upon her association with the spy.

The picture of the room crowded with witnesses, and people whom she knew, and strangers, whilst she gave the evidence which would turn their liking for her into contempt and suspicion would fade away from before her eyes, and the summer afternoon on Duncton Hill glow in its place. She had bidden Hillyard look at the Weald of Sussex, that he might carry the smell of its soil, the aspect of its blooms and dark woodlands and brown cottages away with him as a treasure to which he could secretly turn like a miser to his gold; and she herself, with them ever before her eyes, had forgotten them altogether. To sink back into the rank and file—how fine she had thought it, and how little she had heeded it! Now she had got to pay for her heedlessness, and she buried her face in her pillows and lay shivering.

Meanwhile, in the dining-room downstairs, Millie Splay, Sir Chichester and Harry Luttrell gathered about Martin at the table whilst he ate cold beef and drank a pint of champagne.

"I went up to London to see some one on the editorial staff of the Harpoon," Martin explained. "There were two questions I wanted answers for, if I could get them. You see, according to McKerrel—and you, Sir Chichester, say that he is a capable man—Stella Croyle died at one in the morning."

"Yes," Sir Chichester agreed.

"About one," Harry Luttrell corrected, with the exactness of the soldierly mind.

"'About' will do," Martin rejoined. "For newspapers go to press early nowadays. The Harpoon would have been made up, and most of the editorial staff would have gone home an hour—yes, actually an hour—before Mrs. Croyle died here at Rackham in Sussex. Yet the news is in that very issue. How did that happen? How did the news reach the office of the Harpoon an hour before the event occurred?"

"Yes, that is what has been bothering me," added Sir Chichester.

"Well, that was one question," Martin resumed. "Here's the other. How, when the news had reached the Harpoon office, did it get printed in the paper?"

Millie Splay found no difficulty in providing an explanation of that.

"It's sensational," she said disdainfully.

Martin shook his head.

"I don't think that's enough. The Harpoon, like lots of other newspapers, has its social column, and in that column, no doubt, a paragraph like this one about Stella would have a certain sensational value. But supposing it wasn't true! A libel action follows, follows inevitably. A great deal would be said about the unscrupulous recklessness involved; the judge would come down like a cartload of bricks and the paper would get badly stung. No editor of any reliable paper would run such a risk. No sub-editor, left behind with power to alter and insert, would have taken the responsibility. Before he printed that item of news he would want corroboration of its truth. That's certain. How did he get it? It was true news, and it was corroborated. But, again, it was corroborated before the event happened. How?"

"I haven't an idea," cried Sir Chichester. "I thought I knew something about getting things into the papers, but I see that I am a baby at it."

"It's much the more difficult question of the two," Hillyard agreed. "But we will go back to the first one. How did the news reach the Harpoon office yesterday night? Perhaps you can guess?" and he looked towards Harry Luttrell.

Luttrell, however, was at a loss.

"It's beyond me," he replied, and Martin Hillyard understood how that one morning at the little hotel under the Hog's Back had given to him and him alone the key by which the door upon these dark things might be unlocked.

"The news arrived in the form of a letter marked urgent, which was handed in by the chauffeur of a private motor-car just after midnight. Of the time there is no doubt. I saw the editor myself. The issue would already have gone to press, but late news was expected that night from France, and the paper was waiting for it. Instead this letter came."

A look of bewilderment crept into the faces of the group about the table.

"But who in the world could have written it?" cried Sir Chichester in exasperation.

"It was written over your name."

"Mine?"

The bewilderment in Millie Splay's face deepened into anxiety. She looked at her husband with a sudden sinking of her heart. Had his foible developed into a madness? Such things had been. A little gasp broke from her lips.

"But not in your handwriting," Hillyard hastened to add.

"Whose then?" asked Harry Luttrell suddenly.

"Stella's," answered Hillyard.

A shiver ran from one to the other of that small company, and discomfort kept them silent. A vague dread stole in upon their minds. It was as though some uncanny presence were in the room. They had eaten with Stella Croyle in this room, played with her out there in the sunlit garden, and only one of them had suspected the overwhelming despair which had driven her so hard. They began to blame themselves. "Poor woman! Poor woman!" Millie Splay whispered in a moan.

Sir Chichester broke the silence.

"But we left Stella here when we went to Harrel," he began, and Hillyard interrupted him.

"There's no doubt that Stella sent the message," he said. "Your car, Mrs. Brown's and Luttrell's, were all used to take us to Harrel. One car remained in your garage—Stella's."

"But there wouldn't be time for that car to reach London." Sir Chichester fought against Hillyard's statement. He did not want to believe it. He did not want to think of it. It brought him within too near a view of that horrid brink where overtried nature grows dizzy and whirls down into blackness.

"Just time," Hillyard answered relentlessly, "if you will follow me. Joan certainly returned here last night—that I know, as you know. But she was back again in the ball-room at Harrel within a few minutes of ten o'clock. She must have left Mrs. Croyle a quarter before ten—that, at the latest."

"Yes," Millie Splay agreed.

"Well, I have myself crossed Putney Bridge after leaving here, within ten minutes under the two hours. And that in the daytime. Stella had time enough for her purpose. It was night and little traffic on the road. She writes her letter, sends Jenny with it to the garage, and the car reaches the Harpoon office by twelve."

"But its return?" asked Sir Chichester.

"Simpler still. Your gates were left open last night, and we returned from Harrel at four in the morning. Stella's chauffeur hands in his letter, comes back by the way he went and is home here at Rackham an hour and a half before we thought of saying good-bye to Mrs. Willoughby. That is the way it happened. That is the way it must have happened," Hillyard concluded energetically. "For it's the only way it could have happened."

Luttrell, though he had been a listener and nothing else throughout Martin's statement, had cherished a hope that somehow it might be discovered that Stella had died by an accident. That she should die by her own hand, in this house, under the same roof as Joan, and because of one year which had ended at Stockholm—oh, to him a generation back!—was an idea of irrepressible horror. He could not shake off some sense of guiltiness. He had argued with it all that day, discovering the most excellent contentions, but at the end, not one of them had succeeded in weakening in the least degree his inward conviction that he had his share in Stella's death. Unless her death was an accident, unless, using her drug, she fell asleep and so drifted unintentionally out of life! He still caught at that hope.

"Are you sure that the handwriting was Stella's?" he asked.

"Quite. I saw the letter."

"Did the editor give it to you?"

"No, he had to keep it for his own protection."

"That's a pity," said Harry. A pity—or a relief, since, without that evidence before his eyes, he could still insist upon his pretence.

"Not such a great pity," answered Martin, and taking a letter from his pocket he threw it down upon the table, with the ghost of a smile upon his face. "What do you think I have been doing during the last two years?" he asked drily.

Harry pounced upon the letter and his first glance dispelled his illusion—nay, proved to him that he had never had faith in it. For he saw, without surprise, the broad strokes and the straight up-and-down letters familiar to him of old. Stella had always written rather like a man, a man without character. He had made a joke of it to her in the time before the little jokes aimed by the one at the other had begun to rasp.

"Yes, she wrote the letter and signed it with Sir Chichester's name."

Millie Splay reached out for the letter.

"Stella took a big risk," she said. "I don't understand it. She must have foreseen that Chichester's hand was likely to be familiar in the office."

"No, Millie," said Sir Chichester suddenly, and he spurred his memory. "Of course! Of course! Stella helped me with the telephone one day this week in the library there. I told her that I was new to the Harpoon." He suddenly beat upon the table with his fist. "But why should she write the letter at all? Why should she want her death here, under these strange conditions, announced to the world? A little cruel I call it—yes, Millie, a little cruel."

"Stella wasn't cruel," said Lady Splay.

"She wasn't," Hillyard agreed. "I know why she wrote that. She wrote it to strengthen her hand and will at the last moment. The message was sent, the announcement of her death would be published in the morning, was already in print. Just that knowledge would serve as the final compulsion to do what she wished to do. She wrote lest her courage and nerve should at the last moment fail her, as to my knowledge they had failed her before."

"Before!" cried Millie. "She had tried before! Oh, poor woman!"

"Yes," said Hillyard, and he told them all of the vague but very real fear which had once driven him into Surrey in chase of her; of her bedroom with the bed unslept in and the lights still burning in the blaze of a summer morning; of herself sitting all night at her writing-table, making dashes and figures upon the notepaper and unable to steel herself to the last dreadful act.

Martin Hillyard gave no reason for her misery upon that occasion, nor did any one think to inquire. He just told the story from his heart, and therefore with a great simplicity of words. There was not one of those who heard him, but was moved.

"Yet there were perhaps a couple of hours in her life more grim and horrible than any in that long night," he went on, "the hours between ten o'clock and midnight yesterday."

"Ah, but we don't know how they were spent," began Sir Chichester.

"We know something," returned Martin gravely. "I told you that that letter was corroborated before the paragraph it contained was inserted in the paper."

"Yes," said Lady Splay.

"Whilst they were waiting for the news from France, which did not come, they rang you up from the Harpoon office. Yes: they rang up Rackham Park."

Harry Luttrell snatched up the letter once more from the table. Yes, there across the left-hand corner was printed Sir Chichester's telephone number and the district exchange.

"They were answered by a woman. Of that there's no doubt. And the woman assured them that Stella Croyle was dead. This was at a quarter-past twelve."

There was a movement of horror about the table, and then, with dry lips, Millie Splay whispered:

"Stella!"

"Yes. It must have been," answered Hillyard. "Oh, she had thought out her plan to its last detail. She knew the letter might not be enough. So, whilst we were all dancing at Harrel, she sat alone from ten to midnight in that library, waiting for the telephone to ring, hoping perhaps—for all we know—at the bottom of her heart that it would not ring. But it did, and she answered."

The picture rose vividly before them all. Harrel, with its lighted ball-room and joyous dancers on the one side; the silent library on the other, with Stella herself in all her finery, sitting with her haggard eyes fixed upon the telephone, whilst the slow minutes passed.

"That's terrible," said Millie Splay in a low voice; and such a wave of pity swept over the four people that for a long while no further word was said. Joan upstairs in her room was forgotten. Any thought of resentment in that Stella had used Sir Chichester's name was overlooked by the revelation of the long travail of her soul.

"I remember that she once said to me, 'Women do get the worst of it when they kick over the traces,'" Hillyard resumed. "And undoubtedly they do. On the other hand you have McKerrel's hard-headed verdict, 'If these poor neurotic bodies had any work to do they wouldn't have so much time to worry about their troubles.' Who shall choose between them? And what does it matter now? Stella's gone. She will strain her poor little unhappy heart no more against the bars."

After a time their thoughts reverted to the living.

"There's Joan," said Millie Splay. "Jenny Prask hates her. She means to drag her into some scandal."

"If she can," said Martin. He went out into the hall and returned with the key of Stella Croyle's room. He held it up before them all.

"This key was found on the lawn outside the library window this morning by Luttrell. Jenny has never referred to it since she ran downstairs this morning crying out that the key was not in the lock. It was lying on the hall table all through the time when Sir Chichester was questioning her, and she said never a word about it. She was much too clever. But she saw it. I was watching her when she did see it. There was no concealing the swift look of satisfaction which flashed across her face. I haven't a doubt that she herself dropped the key where it was found."

"Nor I," Luttrell agreed with a despairing vehemence, "but we can't prove it. Jenny Prask is going to know nothing of that key. 'No, no, no, no!' she is going to say, 'Ask Miss Whitworth! Miss Whitworth came back from Harrel. Miss Whitworth was the last person to see Mrs. Croyle alive. Ask her!' It is Jenny Prask or Miss Whitworth. We are up against that alternative all the time. And Jenny holds all the cards. For she knows, damn her, what happened here last night."

"She did hold all the cards this morning," Hillyard corrected. "She doesn't now. Look at this key! There was a heavy dew last night. It was wet underfoot in the garden at Harrel."

"Yes," said Millie.

"How is it then that there's no rust upon the key?" and as he asked the question he twirled the key so that the light flashed upon stem and wards until they shone like silver. "No, this key was placed where you found it, Luttrell, not last night, but this morning after the sun had dried the grass."

"But we came home by daylight," Sir Chichester interposed. "They might argue that Joan might have slipped downstairs before she went to bed, with the key in her hand."

"But she wouldn't have chosen that spot in front of the library window. She might have flung it from her window, she might conceivably have slipped round the house and laid it under Mrs. Croyle's window. But to place it in front of the library to which room she returned from Harrel—no."

"Yes," said Sir Chichester doubtfully. "I see. Joan can make good that point. Yes, she can explain that." And Millie Splay broke in with impatience:

"Explain it! Of course. But what we want is to avoid that she should have to explain anything, that she should be called as a witness at all!"

There lay the point of trouble. To it, they came ceaselessly back, revolving in the circle of their vain argument. Joan had something to conceal, and Jenny Prask was determined that she should disclose it, and Jenny Prask held the means by which to force her.

"But that's just what I am driving at," continued Martin. "We can't afford to be gentle here. There's no lie Jenny Prask wouldn't tell to force Joan into the witness box. We have got to deal relentlessly with Jenny Prask. A woman's voice spoke from this house over the telephone to London at a quarter-past twelve last night, and said that Stella was dead. Whose voice? Not Joan's. Joan was having supper with Luttrell at twelve o'clock. I saw her, others, too, saw her of course. Whose voice then? Stella's, as we say—as we know. But if not Stella's, as Jenny Prask says—why then there is only one other woman's voice which could have given the news."

"Jenny's," cried Millie with a sudden upspring of hope.

"Yes, Jenny Prask's."

Millie Splay rose from her chair swiftly and rang the bell; and when Harper answered it, she said:

"Will you ask Jenny to come here?"

"Now, my lady?"

"Now."

Harper went out of the room and Millie turned again to her friends.

"Will you leave this to me?" she asked.

Sir Chichester was inclined to demur. A few deft and pointed questions, very clear, such as might naturally occur to Hillyard or Luttrell, or Sir Chichester himself might come in usefully to put the polish, as it were, on Millie's spade work. Harry Luttrell smiled grimly.

"We didn't exactly cover ourselves with glory this morning," he said. "I think that we had better leave it to Lady Splay."

Sir Chichester reluctantly consented, and they all waited anxiously for Jenny's appearance. That she would fight to the last no one doubted. Would she fight even to her own danger?

Jenny came into the room, quietly respectful, and without a trace of apprehension.

"You sent for me, my lady."

"Yes, Jenny."

Jenny closed the door and came forward to the table.

"Do you still persist in your story of this morning?" Lady Splay asked.

"Yes, my lady."

"You did not see your mistress at all after Miss Whitworth had talked with her in the library?"

"No, my lady."

"Jenny, I advise you to be quite sure before you speak."

"I am not to be frightened, my lady," said Jenny Prask, with a spot of bright colour showing suddenly in her cheeks.

"I am not trying to frighten you," Millie Splay returned. "But some unexpected news has reached us which, if you persist, will place you in an awkward position."

Jenny Prask smiled. She turned again to the door.

"Is that all, my lady?"

"You had better hear what the news is."

"As you please, my lady."

Jenny stopped and resumed her position.

"The announcement of Mrs. Croyle's death appeared in the Harpoon this morning. The news was left at the Harpoon office by a chauffeur with a private car at midnight—Mrs. Croyle's car."

"It never left the garage last night," said Jenny fiercely.

"You know that for certain?"

"I am engaged to the chauffeur," she replied with a smile; and Millie Splay looked sharply up.

"Oh," she murmured slowly, after a pause. "Thank you, Jenny. Yes, thank you."

The quiet satisfaction of Millie Splay's voice puzzled Jenny and troubled her security. She watched Lady Splay warily. From that moment her assurance faltered, and with the loss of her ease, she lost something, too, of her respectful manner. A note of impertinence became audible.

"Very happy, I'm sure," she said.

"The motor-car delivered the message at midnight," Lady Splay resumed, "and—this is what I ask your attention to, Jenny—the editor, in order to obtain corroboration of the message before he inserted it in his paper, rang up Rackham Park."

Lady Splay paused for Jenny's comment, but none was uttered then. Jenny was listening with a concentration of all her thoughts. Here was a new fact of which she was ignorant, creeping into the affair. Whither did it lead? Did it strike her weapon from her hand? Upset her fine plan of avenging her dear mistress's most unhappy life? She would not believe it.

"He rang up Rackham Park—mark the time, Jenny—at a few minutes after twelve," said Lady Splay impressively, and Jenny's uneasiness was markedly increased.

"Fancy that!" she returned flippantly. "But I don't see, my lady, what that has to do with me."

"You will see, Jenny," Lady Splay continued with gentleness. "He got an answer."

Jenny turned that announcement over in her mind.

"An answer, did he?"

"Yes, Jenny, and an answer in a woman's voice."

A startled cry broke from the lips of Jenny Prask. Her cheeks blanched and horror stared suddenly from her eyes. She understood whose voice it must have been which answered the question from London. Before her, too, the pitiful vision of the lonely woman waiting for the shrill summons of the telephone bell to close the door of life upon her, rose clear; and such a flood of grief and compassion welled up in her as choked her utterance.

"Oh!" she whispered, moaning.

"Whose voice was it, Jenny?"

At the question Jenny rallied. All the more dearly because of that vision, should Joan Whitworth pay, the shining armour of her young beauty be pierced, her pride be humbled, her indifference turned to shame.

"I can't think, my lady—unless it was Miss Whitworth's."

"I asked you to mark the time, Jenny. A few minutes after midnight. Miss Whitworth was at that moment in the supper-room at Harrel. She was seen there. The woman's voice which answered was either Mrs. Croyle's or yours."

Nothing could have been quieter or gentler than Millie Splay's utterance. But it was like a searing iron to the shoulders of Jenny Prask.

"Mine!" The word was launched in a cry of incredulous anger. "It wasn't mine. Oh, as if I would do such a thing! The idea! Well, I never did!"

"I don't believe it was yours, Jenny," said Millie Splay.

"Granted, I'm sure," returned Jenny Prask, tossing her head.

"But how many people will agree with me?" Millie Splay went on.

"I don't care, my lady."

"Don't you? You will, Jenny," said Millie in a hard and biting tone which contrasted violently with the smoothness of her earlier questions. "You are trying, very maliciously, to do a great injury to a young girl who had never a thought of hurting your mistress, and you have only succeeded in placing yourself in real danger."

Jenny tried to laugh contemptuously.

"Me in danger! Goodness me, what next, I wonder?"

"Just listen how your story works out, Jenny," and Millie Splay set it out succinctly step by step.

"Mrs. Croyle never took chloroform as a drug. Mrs. Croyle had no troubles. Mrs. Croyle was quite gay this week. Yet she was found dead with a glass of chloroform arranged between her pillows, so that the fumes must kill her—and Jenny Prask was her maid. A motor-car took the news of Mrs. Croyle's death to London before it had occurred and took the news from Rackham Park. There was only one motor-car in the garage—Mrs. Croyle's—and Mrs. Croyle's chauffeur was engaged to Jenny Prask, Mrs. Croyle's maid. London then telephones to Rackham Park for corroboration of the news, and a woman's voice confirms it—an hour before it was true. There are only two women to choose from, Mrs. Croyle and Jenny Prask, her maid. But since Mrs. Croyle never took drugs, and had no troubles or thoughts of suicide and was quite gay, it follows that Jenny Prask——"

At this point Jenny interrupted in a voice in which fear was now very distinctly audible. "Why, you can't mean—Oh, my lady, you are telling me that—oh!"

"Yes, it begins to look black, Jenny, but I am not at the end," Millie Splay continued implacably. Jenny was not the only woman in that house who could fight if her darling was attacked. "You proceed to direct suspicion at a young girl with the statement that you never saw your mistress after half past nine that night or helped her to undress; and to complete your treachery, you take the key of Mrs. Croyle's door which you found inside her room this morning, and threw it where it may avert inquiry from you and point it against another."

Jenny Prask flinched. The conviction with which Lady Splay announced as a fact the opinion of the small conclave about the table quite deceived her.

"So you know about the key?" she said sullenly. And about the table ran a little quiver of relief. With that question, Jenny Prask had delivered herself into their hands.

"Yes."

Jenny stood with a mutinous face and silent lips. Lady Splay had marshalled in their order the items of the case which would be made against her, if she persisted in her lie. How would she receive them? Persist, reckless of her own overthrow, so long as she overthrew Joan Whitworth too? Or surrender angrily? The four people watched for her answer with anxiety; and it was given in a way which they least expected. For Jenny covered her face with her hands, her shoulders began to heave and great tears burst out between her fingers and trickled down the backs of her hands.

"It's unbearable," she sobbed. "I would have given my life for her—that's the truth. Oh, I know that most maids serve their mistresses for what they can get out of them. But she was so kind to me—wherever she went she was thoughtful of my comfort. Oh, if I had guessed what she meant to do! And I might have!"

The truth came out now. Stella Croyle had given the letter to Jenny, and Jenny herself had taken it to the garage and sent the chauffeur off upon his journey. She had no idea of what the letter contained. Stella was in the habit of inhaling chloroform; she carried a bottle of it in her dressing-case—a bottle which Jenny had taken secretly from the room and smashed into atoms after Doctor McKerrel's departure. She had already conceived her plan to involve Joan in so much suspicion that she must needs openly confess that she had returned from Harrel to meet Mario Escobar in the empty house.

"Mario Escobar!" Millie Splay exclaimed. "It was he." She turned pale. Sir Charles Hardiman had spoken frankly to her of Escobar. A creature of the shadows—it was rumored that he lived on the blackmailing of women. Joan was not out of the wood then! Martin Hillyard was quick to appease her fears.

"He will not trouble you," and when Jenny had gone from the room he added, "Mario Escobar was arrested this morning. He will be interned till the end of the war and deported afterwards."

Lady Splay rose, her face bright with relief.

"Thank you," she said warmly to Hillyard. "I am going up to Joan." At the door she stopped to add, "Now that it's over, I don't mind telling you that I admire Jenny Prask. Out-and-out loyalty like hers is not so common that we can think lightly of it."

Martin Hillyard turned to Sir Chichester.

"And now, if you will allow me, I will open my box of cigarettes."

Harry Luttrell went back to his depot the next morning, without seeing Joan again. Millicent Splay wrote to him during the next week. The inquest had been confined within its proper limits. Jenny Prask had spoken the truth in the witness box, and from beginning to end there had been no mention of Joan or Mario Escobar. A verdict of temporary insanity had been returned, and Stella now lay in the village churchyard. Harry Luttrell drew a breath of relief and turned to his work. For six weeks his days and nights were full; and then came twenty-four hours' leave and a swift journey into Sussex. He arrived at Rackham Park in the dusk of the evening. By a good chance he found Joan with Millie Splay and Sir Chichester alone.

Sir Chichester welcomed him with cordiality.

"My dear fellow, I am delighted to see you. You will stay the night, of course."

"No," Harry answered. "I must get back to London this evening."

He took a cup of tea, and Sir Chichester, obtuse to the warning glances of his wife, plunged into an account of the events which had followed his departure.

"I drew out a statement. Nothing could have been more concise, the coroner said. What's the matter, Millie? Why don't you leave me alone? Oh—ah—yes," and he hummed a little and spluttered a little, and then with an air of the subtlest craft he remarked, "There are those plans for the new pig-sties, Millie, which I am anxious to show you."

He was manœuvred at last from the room. Harry Luttrell and Joan Whitworth were left standing opposite to one another in the room.

"Joan," Harry Luttrell said, "in ten days I go back to France."

With a queer little stumble and her hands fluttering out she went towards him blinded by a rush of tears.

Between the North and South Downs in the east of Sussex lies a wide tract of pleasant homely country which, during certain months of those years, was subject to a strange phenomenon. Listen on a still day when the clouds were low, or at night when the birds were all asleep, and you heard a faint, soft thud, so very faint that it was rather a convulsion of the air than an actual sound. Fancy might paint it as the tap of an enormous muffled drum beaten at a giant's funeral leagues and leagues away. It was not the roll of thunder. There was no crash, however distant, along the sky. It was just the one soft impact with a suggestion of earth-wide portentous force; and an interval followed; and the blurred sound again. The dwellers in those parts, who had sons and husbands at the war, made up no fancies to explain it. They listened with a sinking of the heart; for what they heard was the roar of the British guns at Ypres.

Into this country Martin Hillyard drove a small motor-car on a day of October two years afterwards. Until this week he had not set foot in his country of the soft grey skies since he had left Rackham Park. He had hurried down to Rackham as soon as he had reported to his Chief, but not with the high anticipation of old days. In what spirit would he find his friends? How would Joan meet him? For sorrow had marked her cross upon the door of that house as upon so many others in the land.

Martin had arrived before luncheon.

"Joan is hunting to-day," said Millie, "on the other side of the county. She will catch a train back."

"I can fetch her," Hillyard returned. "She is well?"

"Yes. She was overworked and ordered a rest. She has been with us a fortnight and is better. She was very grateful for your letters. She sent you a telegram because she could not bear to write."

Martin had understood that. He had had little news of her during the two years—a few lines about Harry in the crowded obituaries of the newspapers after the attack in 1917 on the Messines Ridge, where he met his death, and six months afterwards the announcement that a son was born.

"Joan's distress was terrible," said Millie. "At first she refused to believe that Harry was killed. He was reported as 'missing' for weeks; and during those weeks Joan, with a confident face—whatever failings of the heart beset her during the night vigils none ever knew—daily sought for news of him at the Red Cross office at Devonshire House. There had been the usual rumours. One officer in one prison camp had heard of Harry Luttrell in another. A sergeant had seen him wounded, not mortally. A bullet had struck him in the foot. Joan lived upon these rumours. Finally proof came—proof irrefutable.

"Joan collapsed then," said Millie Splay. "We brought her down here and put her to bed. She cried—oh, day and night!—she who never cried! We were afraid for her—afraid for the child that was coming."

Millie Splay smiled wistfully. "She had just two weeks with Harry. They were married before he left for France in 'sixteen, and then had another week together in the January of 'seventeen at his house in the Clayford country. That was all." Millie Splay was silent for a few minutes. Then she resumed cheerfully:

"But she is better now. She will talk of him, indeed, likes at times to talk of him; she is comforted by it, and the boy"—Millie's face became radiant—"the boy is splendid. You shall see him."

Martin was shown the boy. He seemed to him much like any other boy of his age, but such remarkable things in the way of avoirdupois poundage and teething, serenity of temper and quickness of apprehension were explained to him that he felt that he must be in the presence of a prodigy.

"Chichester will want to see you. He is in the library. He is Chairman of our Food Committee. You may have seen it in the papers," said Millie with a smile. "He is back in the papers again, you know."

"Good. Then he won't object to me smoking a cigarette," said Martin.

He motored over in the afternoon to the house on the other side of Sussex where he was to find Joan. He drove her away with him, and as they came to the top of a little crest in the flat country, Martin stopped the car and looked about him.

"I never cease to be surprised by the beauty of this country when I come home to it."

"Yes, but I wish that would stop."

That was the dull and muffled boom of the great guns across the sea. They sat and listened to it in silence.

"There it comes again!" said Joan in a quiet voice. "Oh, I do wish it would stop! What has happened to me, has happened to enough of us."

As Millie had said, she was glad to talk of Harry Luttrell to his friends; and she talked simply and naturally, with a little note of wistfulness heard in all the words.

"We were going to have a small house in London and spend our time between it and the old Manor at Clayford.... Harry had seen the house.... He was always writing that I must watch for it to come into the market.... It had a brass front door. There we should be. We could go out when we wished, and when we wished we could be snug behind our own brass door." Joan laughed simply and lovingly as she spoke. Hillyard had never seen her more beautiful than she was at this moment. If grief had taken from her just the high brilliancy of her beauty, it had added to it a most appealing tenderness.

"After all," she said again, "Harry fulfilled himself. I love to think of that. The ambition of his life—young as he was he saw it realized and helped—more than all others, except perhaps one old Colonel—to realise it. And he left me a son ... to carry on.... There will be no stigma on the Clayfords when my boy gets his commission. Won't I tell him why? Won't I just tell him!"

And the soft October evening closed in upon them as they drove.

THE END

This article uses material from the Wikipedia article  Metasyntactic variable, which is released under the  Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.