For the first time she looked at him gratefully "Thank you," she said.

"I can walk," the Colonel repeated obstinately. "A little giddy, that
is all." But in the end he needed all the help that both could give
him. And so it happened that a few minutes later Luke Asgill, standing
at the entrance to the courtyard, a little anxious indeed, but aware of
no immediate danger, looked along the road, and saw the three
approaching, linked in apparent amity.

The shock was great, for James McMurrough had fled, cursing, into
solitude and the hills, taking no steps to warn his ally. The sight,
thus unforeseen, struck Asgill with the force of a bullet. Colonel John
released, and in the company of Flavia and Payton! All his craft, all
his coolness forsook him. He slunk out of sight by a back way, but not
before Payton had marked his retreat.

CHAPTER XXII

THE SCENE IN THE PASSAGE

Asgill saw himself in the position of a commander whose force has been
outflanked, and who has to decide on the instant how he may best
re-form it on a new front. Flavia and Colonel Sullivan, Flavia and
Payton, Payton and Colonel Sullivan--each of these conjunctions had for
him a separate menace; each threatened either his suit for Flavia, or
his standing in the house through which, and through which alone, he
could hope to win her. In addition, the absence of James McMurrough at
this critical moment left Asgill in the most painful perplexity. If
James knew what had happened, why was he wanting at this moment, when
it behoved them to decide, and to decide quickly, what line they would
take?

Under the shadow of the great peat-stack at the back of the house,
whither he had retired that he might make up his mind before he faced
the three, Asgill bit his nails and cursed The McMurrough with all his
heart, calling him a score of names, each worse than the other. It was,
it must be, through his folly and mismanagement that the thing had
befallen, that the prisoner had been released, that Payton had been let
into the secret. The volley of oaths that flew from Asgill expressed no
more than a tithe of his rage and his bewilderment.

How was he to get rid of Payton? How prevent Colonel John from resuming
that sway in the house which he had exercised before? How nip in the
bud that nascent sympathy, that feeling for him which Flavia's outbreak
the night before had suggested? Or how, short of all this, was he to
face either Payton or the Colonel?