artist, speaking almost harshly. "I
wish it was, Miss Maynard. I am here on very serious business--so
serious that if I did not know you were a brave woman I should not dare
to approach you about it. As it is I am sorely tempted to run away and
leave matters as they are."

"I beg you will not do that," said Violet gravely. "It would be more
cruel than if you had not come to me at all. I presume that it is about
the suspicion that has been cast on Mr. Chermside?"

Nugent smiled inwardly as he noticed the change in her tone since last
night. No longer did she heap contempt upon the inference as to
Chermside's meeting with Levison. She was serious, and almost
pathetically meek. Like Mr. Mallory he had watched the lovers on their
return from the orangery to the drawing-room, and he had at the time
gloated over the coolness that had evidently arisen between them. That
ineffable idiot Chermside had, he congratulated himself, said or done
something to shake her confidence--just as he, Nugent, had expected and
intended.

But aloud he said, "Yes, it is about Chermside. Greatly against my will,
I have consented to be his ambassador--to bring you a message from him,
Miss Maynard. It will be kindest to break the worst to you without
beating about the bush. Chermside is leaving England to-night. He is
going to sail for South America in the yacht which has been kept in
readiness for him at Weymouth."

"Sailing to-night? Without coming to say good-bye--without a word of
explanation?" And the sweet eyes brimmed with unshed tears at the
conduct of the man who had so recently held her in his arms at that very
spot.

"It is so hard to wound you," Nugent protested, and the faultlessly
simulated note of self-pity with which he tinged his speech carried
conviction. "He dared not come to you, Miss Maynard. Somehow the police
have got wind of the appointment he had with the dead man, and he is in
danger of arrest. He is in hiding, and it is touch and go whether he
will get on board safely after dark. I am a selfish man, and I would
give a good deal if Leslie Chermside's letters of introduction had been
to any one but myself. All this has placed me in a most unpleasant
position."

"But I do not understand," Violet protested. "Mr. Chermside has not
committed this murder. Why does he not laugh at the charge, and stay and
meet it? He must be able to prove his innocence."

Travers Nugent's shrug was eloquent--so eloquent that Violet fired