decorous lapse of time they would marry. He thought
Colonel Grey uncommonly fortunate.

Then he again wondered what had so perturbed them when he had been at
the Castle inquiring into the death of Lord Loudwater. What did they know
of the mystery? What part had they played in it?

Soon after he had left her Olivia went to London to spend the week-end
with her husband. But she did not go in her wonted joyful mood. She tried
to thrust it out of her mind; but Mr. Flexen's visit had brought back her
old fear. Grey at once perceived that she was not in good spirits, and he
was a little alarmed. He had firmly kept his thought from the danger
which still hung over them. Now he caught from her something of her
uneasiness. But he would not yield to it, and by the end of dinner he
had, for the while at any rate, banished it from both their minds.

Then when he awoke that night, quietly, at the turning hour, he heard
Olivia crying very softly.

He put his arm round her and said seriously "What is it, darling? What's
the matter?"

"Oh, why ever did you kill him?" she wailed. "He--he wasn't worth it. And
I'd have come to you without. And we might have been so happy!"

Grey, with a start, sat bolt upright, and in a tone of the last
astonishment stammered: "K-K-Kill him? Me? B-B-But I thought you
k-k-killed him!"

He had never been so taken aback in his life.

Olivia sat bolt upright in her turn.

"Me?" she said in an astonishment fully as great as his. "No, I didn't."

Then with one accord they clung to one another and laughed tremulously in
an immeasurable relief.

Then Olivia said: "And you didn't mind? You married me when you actually
thought I'd murdered Egbert?"

"Oh, Egbert!" said Grey in a tone of contempt which placed the late Lord
Loudwater definitely as a person the murder of whom was neither here nor
there. Then he added: "But, hang it all! You married me when you actually
thought I'd murdered him."

"I thought you did it for my sake," said Olivia.

"I thought you did it for mine--to get me out of a mess. Though I'll be
shot if I believe I should have cared if you'd done it entirely on your
own account. Not that you could."

"Oh, Antony, how very fond of one another we must be!" said Olivia in a
hushed voice.

It was after breakfast next morning that Olivia, who stood before the
window, smoking a cigarette and watching the passers-by, turned and said:
"But if neither you nor I murdered Egbert, who did?