e going to be as bad as this, I want to leave England, I want
at least to know. And Jimmy will forgive me, it's such a wonderfully
good cause ... a woman going to find her husband on Christmas Eve!"

The Duchess threw open the window to its widest. Down in the garden on
the stone wall the big dial lay in the shadow of the afternoon. She
could not read its motto, but she knew perfectly what it said--_Utere
dum licet_. As she leaned out above her garden, under her window the
snowballs hung their waxen globes in a green tree. There were a few
winter roses blooming, and the English garden had the beauty of summer
in winter time.

The Duchess heard a sharp sound close to the house. It was a rifle
shot, and died instantly on the still air. Shots were not uncommon in
this season, but here in The Dials woods they were entirely out of
character; in fact, they were quite inadmissible. There was no
shooting let, and a shot could only mean poaching, or something more
serious. The Duchess waited a few moments, but no other sound
followed. She nevertheless drew the casement in, and, going down
stairs threw her stole about her shoulders and opened the house door
into the garden. At the sight of her, down by the other end of the
wall, the gardener lifted up his bent form, and with a little pannier
of hot-house violets in his hands, hurried towards his lady.

"Mellon," said she, "have you any violets?"

The Duchess took the fragrant basket with its delicate burden.

"A mort, my lady."

"Pick them all, Mellon, and all the flowers from the green-house too,
every one of them, and fetch up whatever there is to the cottage."

The old man was deaf, as well as discreet, and if this sudden command
to vandalism surprised him, he did not say so. Holding his hand behind
his ear, he nodded.

"I shall send them," the Duchess thought, "up to Jimmy Bulstrode. I
think he will understand, and I will ask him at the same time to take
his friend off somewhere in a motor that I may go unobserved to the
castle."

She said a few more words to the old man, asked him a few questions,
then with the basket on her arm she was about to turn away when she
remembered the shot.

"Did you hear a shot, Mellon? They should not be shooting about here,
you know." But the old man had heard nothing, and, intending to find
the lodgekeeper who was clipping the trees on the lower terrace and ask
him to go through the woods for her, the Duchess walked