er questioningly for a moment, then his look returned
to Dick. "I am the friend who never tells," he observed. "So it was--Miss
Moore--you were playing to, was it? Ah, _Juliette_!" He threw her a
sudden smile. "I would I could play like that!"

She uttered her soft, low laugh. "No; you have quite enough
accomplishments, _mon ami_. Now, if you don't mind, I think we
had better walk back and find Mr. and Mrs. Fielding. Perhaps you
know--or again perhaps you don't--they live at Shale Court. And I
am with them--as Mrs. Fielding's companion. I--" she hesitated
momentarily--"have left Lady Jo."

"Oh, I know that," said Saltash. "I've missed you badly. We all have.
When are you coming back to us?"

"I don't know," said Juliet.

He gave her one of his humorous looks. "Next week--some time--never?"

She opened her sun-shade absently. "Probably," she said.

"Rather hard on Lady Jo, what?" he suggested. "Don't you miss her at
all?"

"No," said Juliet. "I can't--honestly--say I do."

"Oh, let us be honest at all costs!" he said. "Do you know what Lady Jo
is doing now?"

Juliet hesitated an instant, as if the subject were distasteful to her.
"I can guess," she said somewhat distantly.

"I'll bet you can't," said Saltash, with a twist of the eyebrows that
was oddly characteristic of him. "So I'll tell you. She's running in an
obstacle race, and--to be quite, quite honest--I don't think she's
going to win."

There was a moment's pause. Then the man on Juliet's other side spoke,
briefly and with decision. "Miss Moore is no longer interested in Lady
Joanna Farringmore's doings. Their friendship is at an end."

Juliet made a slight gesture of remonstrance, but she spoke no word in
contradiction.

A gleam of malice danced in Saltash's eyes; it was like the turn of a
rapier in a practised hand. "Most wise and proper!" he said. "_Juliette_,
I always admired your discretion."

"You were always very kind, Charles Rex," she made grave reply.

CHAPTER III

THE PRICE

They went back up the winding glen, and as they went Lord Saltash talked,
superbly at his ease, of the doings of the past few weeks, "since you and
that naughty Lady Jo dropped out," as he expressed it to Juliet. He had
just recently been to Paris, had motored across France, had just returned
by sea from Bordeaux in his yacht, the _Night Moth_.

"Landed to-day--forgot this unspeakable flower-show--had to put in to
get her cleaned up for Cowes--though