"No; not yet," said Thrush, after a pause. "But you take my breath away,
my dear young lady! How could you be so sure of me? Is it no longer to
be kept a secret, and is that why your father bolted out of town without a
word?"

"It's still a secret," whispered Lettice, as though the shrubs had ears,
"only I'm in it. Nobody else is--nobody fresh--but I guessed, and my mother
was beginning to suspect. My father never stays away a Sunday unless he's
out of England altogether; she couldn't understand it, and was worrying so
about him that I wired begging him to come back if only for the night. So
it's all my fault, Mr. Thrush; and I know everything but what you've come
down to tell us!"

"That's next to nothing," he shrugged. "It's neither good nor bad. But if
you can find your father I'll tell you both exactly what I have found
out."

In common with all his sex, he liked and trusted Lettice at sight, without
bestowing on her a passing thought as a person capable of provoking any
warmer feeling. She was the perfect sister--that he felt as instinctively
as everybody else--and a woman to trust into the bargain. It would be
cruel and quite unnecessary to hide anything from that fine and unselfish
face. So he let her lead him to a little artificial cave, lined and
pungent with pitch-pine, over against the rhododendrons, while she went to
fetch her father quietly from the house.

The ironmaster amplified the excuses already made for him; he had rushed
for the first train after getting his daughter's telegram, leaving but a
line for Thrush with his telephone number, in the hopes that he would use
it whether he had anything to report or not.

"As you didn't," added Mr. Upton, in a still aggrieved voice, "I've been
trying again and again to ring you up instead; but of course you were
never there, nor your man Mullins either. I was coming back by the last
train, however, and should have been with you late to-night."

"Did you leave the motor behind?"

"Yes; it'll be there to meet me at St. Pancras."

"It may have to do more than that," said Thrush, spreading his full
breadth on the pitch-pine seat. "I've found out something; how much or
how little it's too soon to tell; but I wasn't going to discuss it through
a dozen country exchanges as long as you wanted the thing a dead secret,
Mr. Upton, and that's why I didn't ring you up. As for your last train,
I'd have waited to meet it in town, only that wouldn't hav