, under
his instructions. My mission in this country, here at Dreymarsh--do
not shrink from me if you can help it--was to obtain a copy of his mine
protection scheme of a certain town on the east coast."

"Why should I shrink from you?" she murmured. "This is all too
wonderful! What a little beast Henry must think me!" she added, with
truly feminine and marvellously selfish irrelevance.

"You and Miss Fairclough," Lessingham went on, "have rather scoffed at
my presence here on behalf of our Secret Service. It seemed to you both
very ridiculous. Now you understand."

"It makes no difference," Philippa protested tearfully. "You always told
us the truth."

"And I shall continue to do so," Lessingham assured her. "I am not a
clever person at my work which is all new to me, but fortune favoured
me the night your husband was shipwrecked. I succeeded in stealing from
him, on board that wrecked trawler, the plan of the mine field which I
was sent over to procure."

"Of course you had to do it if you could," Philippa sobbed. "I think it
was very clever of you."

He smiled.

"There are others who might look at the matter differently," he said. "I
am going to ask you a question which I know is unnecessary, but I must
have your answer to take away with me. If you had known all the time
that your husband, instead of being a skulker, as you thought him, was
really doing splendid work for his country, you would not have listened
to me for one moment, would you? You would not have let me grow to love
you?"

She clutched his hands.

"You are the dearest man in the world," she exclaimed, her lips still
quivering, "but, as you say, you know the answer. I was always in love
with Henry. It was because I loved him that I was so furious. I liked
you so much that it was mean of me ever to think of--of what so nearly
happened."

"So nearly happened!" he repeated, with a sudden access of the bitterest
self-pity.

Once more the low, warning hoot of the motor horn, this time a
little more impatient, broke the silence. Philippa was filled with an
unreasoning terror.

"You must go!" she implored. "You must go this minute! If they were to
take you, I couldn't bear it. And that man Griffiths--he has sworn that
if he can not get the Government authority, he will shoot you!"

"Griffiths has gone to London," he reminded her.

"Yes, but he may be back by this train," she cried, glancing at the
clock, "and I have a strange sort of fancy