eyes with a moist, screwed-up
ball of something that had once been a cambric handkerchief. "But I've
quite recovered now--really. Come and tell me about everything. Did
Davilof play for you all right? And did you enjoy the dance afterwards?
And, oh, I forgot! There's a letter for you on the mantelpiece. It was
delivered by hand while we were both at Lady Arabella's."

Mechanically, as she responded to Gillian's rapid fire of questions,
Magda picked up the square envelope propped against the clock and slit
open the flap. It was probably only some note of urgent invitation--she
received dozens of them. An instant later a half-stifled cry broke from
her. Gillian turned swiftly.

"What is it?" she asked, a note of apprehension sharpening her voice.

Magda stared at her dumbly. Then she held out the letter.

"Read it," she said flatly. "It's from Kit Raynham's mother."

Gillian's eyes flew along the two brief lines of writing:

"Kit has disappeared. Do you know where he is?--ALICIA RAYNHAM."

CHAPTER VIII

THE FIRST REAPING

At breakfast, some hours later, Magda was in a curiously petulant and
uncertain mood. To some extent her fractiousness was due to natural
reaction after the emotional excitement of the previous evening.
Granted the discovery of the Garden of Eden, and add to this the almost
immediate intrusion of outsiders therein--for everybody else is an
"outsider" to the pair in possession--and any woman might be forgiven
for suffering from slightly frayed nerves the following day. And
in Magda's case she had been already rather keyed up by finding the
preceding few days punctuated by unwelcome and unaccustomed happenings.

They all dated from the day of the accident which had befallen her in
the fog. It almost seemed as though that grey curtain of fog had been
a symbol of the shadow which was beginning to dog her footsteps--the
shadow which stern moralists designate "unpleasant consequences."

First there had been Michael Quarrington's plain and candid utterance of
his opinion of her. Then had followed Davilof's headlong wooing and
his refusal, when thwarted, to play for her again. He, too, had not
precisely glossed things over in that tirade of accusation and reproach
which he had levelled at her!

And now, just when it seemed as though she had put these other ugly
happenings behind her, Kit Raynham, who for the last six months had been
one of the little court of admirers which surrounded her, h