d be like to care for some one. I knew it
wasn't any use. And then this miracle happened. I couldn't help it," she
went on doggedly. "I never thought of it at first. It came to me like a
great flash that the only way to save you--"

"To save me from what?" he asked.

"From being shot as a spy," she answered quickly. "There! I'm not a
fool, you know. You may think I'm a fool about you but I am not about
things in general. Good-bye! This is my aunt's. Don't come in. Ring me
up to-morrow morning. I'll meet you anywhere. Good-bye, please! I want
to run away."

He watched her go, a little dazed. A trim parlourmaid came out and,
after a few words of explanation, superintended the disposal of her
luggage in the hall. Then the taxicab man returned.

"Back to Sackville Street," Granet muttered.

CHAPTER XXX

Granet, on his return to Sackville Street, paid the taxicab driver,
ascended the stairs and let himself into his rooms with very much the
air of a man who has passed through a dream. A single glance around,
however, brought him vivid realisations of his unwelcome visitor. The
little plate of sandwiches, half finished, the partly emptied bottle
of wine, were still there. One of her gloves lay in the corner of the
easy-chair. He picked it up, drew it for a moment through his fingers,
then crushed it into a ball and flung it into the fire. Jarvis, who had
heard him enter, came from one of the back rooms.

"Clear these things away, Jarvis," his master ordered. "Leave the
whiskey and soda and tobacco on the table. I may be late."

Jarvis silently obeyed. As soon as he was alone, Granet threw himself
into the easy-chair. He was filled with a bitter sense of being
entrapped. He had been a little rash at Market Burnham, perhaps, but if
any other man except Thomson had been sent there, his explanations would
have been accepted without a word, and all this miserable complication
would have been avoided. He thought over Isabel's coming, all that she
had said. She had left him no loophole. She had the air of a young
woman who knew her own mind excellently well. A single word from her to
Thomson and the whole superstructure of his ingeniously built-up life
might tumble to pieces. He sat with folded arms in a grim attitude of
unrest, thinking bitter thoughts. They rolled into his brain like black
shadows. He had been honest in the first instance. With ancestors from
both countries, he had deliberately chosen the country to wh