espects before you leave to-morrow?
Then we'll tell you all you want to know. Anyhow, we may be going on for
some time in your direction. I saw by a Paris paper a few days ago you
were making a tour of the Fronts, beginning at the Lorraine end."

His eyes were on me as he spoke, bright with imp-like malice. He looked
so like a mischievous schoolboy that it was hard to take him seriously.
Yet everything warned me to do so, and his allusion to the Paris
newspapers explained much. For the second time a reporter had caught
Father Beckett, and got out of him the statement that "My dead son's
fiancee, Miss Mary O'Malley, who's been nursing in a 'contagious'
hospital near St. Raphael, will be with us: and her brother."

So that was how the man had heard about me, and for some reason found it
worth while to follow, waving the sword of Damocles! His note burned my
pocket. And _I_ burned to know what it said. No doubt it would explain
why he did not cut off my head at once, and have it over!

"I think," he was going on, "that the sooner I can get this poor little
girl" (a tap on his sister's shoulder) "to her room and to bed the
better it will be."

Any one apparently less likely to faint, or less in need of rest, than
the "poor little girl" indicated, it would be difficult to find, I
thought: but the kindly Becketts were the last creatures to be critical.
They sympathized, and changed their invitation from after-dinner coffee
to breakfast at nine. This was accepted by O'Farrell for himself and his
sister, and taking the girl's arm, the ex-singer swept her off in a
dramatic exit.

When they had gone, it was Brian who asked me if I had known them in the
south; and because no incentive could make me lie to Brian, I promptly
answered "No." As I spoke, it occurred to me that now, if ever, was the
moment when I might still succeed in spoking the wheel of Mr. and Miss
O'Farrell before that wheel had time to crush me. I could throw doubt
upon their good faith. I could hint that, if they had really been doing
Red Cross or other work at St. Raphael, I should certainly have heard of
them. But I held my peace--partly through qualms of conscience, partly
through fear. Unless the man had proofs to bring of his _bona fides_
where Jim Beckett was concerned, he would scarcely have followed us to
claim acquaintance with the parents and confound the alleged fiancee.
That he had followed us on purpose I was sure. Not for a second did I
believe