ad, and
the high, splendidly modelled forehead was obscured and the keen eyes
were hidden. The beauty of the face was lost, and the mouth showed thin
lipped and sensual. The Colonel was really a stumbling, red-faced old
man.

"Look at him. That's what she's seen. This was Judith's party. That's
what we've hung on in this town for till it's too late to break loose.
We never can get away now. We can't----"

"Keep still, Harry. Do you want to be heard? Did any one hear you at the
telephone? Keep still and come home."

"You're right. You're wonderful. You don't lose your nerve."

"I can't afford to, and neither can you. Come---- Oh, Harry, look. I saw
him following you. What does he want? What's the matter? What is he
going to do?"

Mrs. Randall had adjusted her cloak deliberately, and turned to pilot
her husband out of the garden, slipping a firm little hand through his
arm. Now she clung to him and stood still, silent after her little fire
of excited questions. The entrance to the garden was blocked. An
uninvited and unexpected guest was standing there.

His entrance had been unheralded, and his welcome was slow to come. The
crowd had closed in round the Colonel, with Edith Kent caught suddenly
in his arms, and giving a creditable imitation of attempting to escape.
Interested silence and bursts of laughter indicated the progress of it
clearly, though the two were entirely out of sight. Nobody saw the
newcomer except the Randalls.

He stood in the entrance to the rose arbour, clutching at the trellis
with one unsteady hand, and managing to keep fairly erect, a slightly
built, swaying figure, black-haired and hatless. He kept one hand behind
him, awkwardly, as a shy boy guards a favourite plaything. He was
staring into the crowd in the garden as if he could see through into the
heart of it, but had not the intellect just then to understand what he
saw there.

It was the man Mrs. Randall had seen lurking in the shadow of the trees,
but he was no mysterious stranger, though here in the light of the
lanterns she hardly recognized him as she looked at his pale, excited
face; it showed an excitement quite unaccounted for by the perfectly
obvious fact that he was drunk, and entirely unconnected with that fact.
Here and there on the outskirts of the crowd some one turned and saw
him, too, and stared at him. They all knew him. He was Neil Donovan's
cousin, the discredited young lawyer, Charlie Brady.

He did not speak o