at they forgot to salute the very
large, quiet, wingless owl whom they could espy moving about by day above
their mouse-runs, or preening her white and sometimes blue and sometimes
grey feathers morning and evening in a large square hole high up in the
front wall. And they could not understand at all why no swift
depredating graces nor any habit of long soft hooting belonged to that
lady-bird.

On the evening of the day when she received that early morning call, as
soon as dusk had fallen, wrapped in a long thin cloak, with black lace
over her dark hair, Audrey Noel herself fluttered out into the lanes, as
if to join the grave winged hunters of the invisible night. Those far,
continual sounds, not stilled in the country till long after the sun
dies, had but just ceased from haunting the air, where the late May-scent
clung as close as fragrance clings to a woman's robe. There was just the
barking of a dog, the boom of migrating chafers, the song of the stream,
and of the owls, to proclaim the beating in the heart of this sweet
Night. Nor was there any light by which Night's face could be seen; it
was hidden, anonymous; so that when a lamp in a cottage threw a blink
over the opposite bank, it was as if some wandering painter had wrought a
picture of stones and leaves on the black air, framed it in purple, and
left it hanging. Yet, if it could only have been come at, the Night was
as full of emotion as this woman who wandered, shrinking away against the
banks if anyone passed, stopping to cool her hot face with the dew on the
ferns, walking swiftly to console her warm heart. Anonymous Night
seeking for a symbol could have found none better than this errant
figure, to express its hidden longings, the fluttering, unseen rushes of
its dark wings, and all its secret passion of revolt against its own
anonymity....

At Monkland Court, save for little Ann, the morning passed but dumbly,
everyone feeling that something must be done, and no one knowing what.
At lunch, the only allusion to the situation had been Harbinger's
inquiry:

"When does Miltoun return?"

He had wired, it seemed, to say that he was motoring down that night.

"The sooner the better," Sir William murmured: "we've still a fortnight."

But all had felt from the tone in which he spoke these words, how serious
was the position in the eyes of that experienced campaigner.

What with the collapse of the war scare, and this canard about Mrs. Noel,
there was