ome up here, now?" he asked with that glowering legal air
of his; thrusting the question at me as if I must, now, be finally
confuted.

"After you ran away from me in the avenue," I said promptly, "it seemed
that the only thing left for me to do was to walk to Hurley Junction; but
a quarter of a mile from the Park gate I found your car drawn up by the
side of the road. And as I had no sort of inclination to walk fourteen
miles on a broiling afternoon, I decided to wait by the car until some one
came to fetch it. And when presently Banks came, I tried my best to
persuade him to take me to the station in it. He refused on the grounds
that he wanted to take the car back at once to the garage; but when I
explained my difficulty to him, his hospitable mind prompted him to offer
me temporary refuge at the Home Farm. He brought me back to introduce me,
and we found you here. Simple, isn't it?"

Jervaise scowled at the hearth-rug. "All been a cursed misunderstanding
from first to last," he growled.

"But what was that about Grace Tattersall?" Brenda asked. "If you'd
accused _her_ of spying, I could have understood it. She was trying to
pump me for all she was worth yesterday afternoon."

"I've admitted that there must have been some misunderstanding," Jervaise
said. "For goodness' sake, let's drop this question of Melhuish's
interference and settle the more important one of what we're going to do
about--you."

"I resent that word 'interference,'" I put in.

"Oh! resent it, then," Jervaise snarled.

"Really, I think Mr. Melhuish is perfectly justified," Brenda said. "I
feel horribly ashamed of the way you've been treating him at home. I
should never have thought that the mater..."

"Can't you understand that she's nearly off her head with worrying about
you?" Jervaise interrupted.

"No, I can't," Brenda returned. "If it had been Olive, I could. But I
should have thought they would all have been jolly glad to see the last of
me. They've always given me that impression, anyhow."

"Not in this way," her brother grumbled.

"What do you mean by that exactly?" Anne asked with a great seriousness.

I think Jervaise was beginning to lose his nerve. He was balanced so
dangerously between the anxiety to maintain the respectability of the
Jervaises and his passion, or whatever it was, for Anne. Such, at least,
was my inference; although how he could possibly reconcile his two
devotions I could not imagine, unless his intentio