f 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.

Hillya