referred the main road! Help me up, Orden. Isn't it somewhere near here
that that little affair, happened the other night?"

"This very spot," Julian assented. "Miss Abbeway and I were just
speaking of it."

They both glanced towards her. She was standing with her back to them,
looking out seawards. She did not move even at the mention of her name.

"A dreary spot at night, I dare say," the Prime Minister remarked,
without overmuch interest. "How do we get home from here, Orden? I
haven't forgotten your warning about luncheon, and this air is giving me
a most lively appetite."

"Straight along the top of this ridge for about three quarters of a
mile, sir, to the entrance of the harbour there."

"And then?"

"I have a petrol launch," Julian explained, "and I shall land you
practically in the dining room in another ten minutes."

"Let us proceed," Mr. Stenson suggested briskly. "What a queer fellow
Miles Furley is! Quite a friend of yours, isn't he, Miss Abbeway?"

"I have seen a good deal of him lately," she answered, walking on and
making room for Stenson to fall into step by her side, but still keeping
her face a little averted. "A man of many but confused ideas; a man, I
should think, who stands an evil chance of muddling his career away."

"We offered him a post in the Government," Stenson ruminated.

"He had just sense enough to refuse that, I suppose," she observed,
moving slowly to the right and thereby preventing Julian from taking a
place by her side. "Yet," she went on, "I find in him the fault of so
many Englishmen, the fault that prevents their becoming great statesmen,
great soldiers, or even," she added coolly, "successful lovers."

"And what is that?" Julian demanded.

She remained silent. It was as though she had heard nothing. She caught
Mr. Stenson's arm and pointed to a huge white seagull, drifting down the
wind above their heads.

"To think," she said, "with that model, we intellectuals have waited
nearly two thousand years for the aeroplane!"

CHAPTER VIII

According to plans made earlier in the day, a small shooting party left
the Hall immediately after luncheon and did not return until late in the
afternoon. Julian, therefore, saw nothing more of Catherine until she
came into the drawing-room, a few minutes before the announcement of
dinner, wearing a wonderful toilette of pale blue silk, with magnificent
pearls around her neck and threaded in her Russian headdress. As is t