t she quivered for an instant before lowering her own. "I
hate that confounded puppy," he explained lamely, guarding his voice
with a new care. "If you felt as I do, you would too."

She laughed in the old way, but she was not soon to forget that moment
when panic was so imminent.

"I--I don't see how anyone can help liking Freddie," she said, without
actually knowing why. He stared hard at the Danube below. After a long
silence he said,--

"It's all tommy-rot about it being blue, isn't it?"

She was also looking at the dark brown, swollen river that has been
immortalised in song.

"It's never blue. It's always a yellow-ochre, it seems to me."

He waited a long time before venturing to express the thought that of
late had been troubling him seriously.

"I wonder if you truly realise the difficulty Edith will have in
satisfying an incredulous world with her absolutely truthful story.
She'll have to explain, you know. There's bound to be a sceptic or two,
my dear Constance."

"But there's Roxbury," she protested, her face clouding nevertheless.
"_He_ will set everything right."

"The world will say he is a gullible fool," said he gently. "And the
world always laughs at, not with, a fool. Alas, my dear sister, it's a
very deep pool we're in." He leaned closer and allowed a quaint,
half-bantering, wholly diffident smile to cross his face. "I--I'm afraid
that you are the only being on earth who can make the story thoroughly
plausible."

"I?" she demanded quickly. Their eyes met, and the wonder suddenly left
hers. She blushed furiously. "Nonsense!" she said, and abruptly left him
to take a seat beside Katherine Rodney. He found small comfort in the
whisperings and titterings that came, willy-nilly, to his burning ears
from the corner of the compartment. He had a disquieting impression that
they were discussing him; it was forced in upon him that being a
brother-in-law is not an enviable occupation.

"Wot?" he asked, almost fiercely, after the insistent Freddie had thrice
repeated a question.

"I say, will you have a cigaret?" half shouted Freddie, exasperated.

"Oh! No, thanks. The train makes such a beastly racket, don't you know."

"They told me at the Bristol you were deaf, but--Oh, I say, old man, I'm
sorry. Which ear is it?"

"The one next to you," replied Brock, recovering from his confusion. "I
hear perfectly well with the other one."

"Yes," drawled Freddie, with a wink, "so I've observed." After a