and watch Joan at Starden,
but he could go to London and watch Mr. Philip Slotman.

"What I'll do is this--I'll have a watch kept on that man. There are
private detective chaps who'll do it for me. If he goes down to Starden,
I'll be after him hot-foot. And if he does go there to annoy and insult
Joan--I'll break his neck!" he added, with cheerful decision.

"And she--she is going to marry another man, a man she doesn't love--she
can't love. I know she cannot love." He added aloud: "Joan, you don't
love him, my darling, you know you don't. You dared not stay and face me
that day. Your words meant nothing. You may think you despise me, but
you don't: you want to, my dear, but you can't; and you can't because,
thank God, you love me! Oh, fool! Cheer yourself up, slap yourself on
the back. It doesn't help you. She may love you as you boast, but she'll
never marry you. She wants to hate you, and she'll keep on wanting to
hate, and I believe--Heaven help me--that her will is stronger than her
heart. But--but anyhow, that brute Slotman shan't worry her while I can
crawl about."

He was driven to the station the following morning. And now he was in
the train for London.

"I'll find out a firm of detectives and put 'em on Slotman," he thought,
"but first I'll go and have a look round. What's the name of the
place?--Gracebury."

At the entrance to Gracebury, which as everyone knows is a cul-de-sac of
no considerable extent, Hugh stopped his taxi and got out. He walked
down the wide pavement till he came to the familiar door.

"I'll see him," he thought. "I'll go in and have a few words with him,
just to remind him that his neck is in jeopardy."

He went up the stone steps and paused.

The door of Mr. Philip Slotman's office was closed. On the door was
pasted a paper, stating that a suite of three offices was to let.

CHAPTER XXIX

"WHY DOES SHE TAKE HIM FROM ME?"

"Why--why--why?" Ellice asked herself. Why should this woman who did not
love him wish to take him away from her, who worshipped the ground he
trod on, who looked up to him as the best, the finest of all God's
created creatures?

That Joan Meredyth did not love John Everard no one understood more
clearly than Ellice Brand. She had watched them when they were together,
she had watched the girl apart; and the watcher's body might be that of
a child, but her eyes were the eyes of a woman, as was her heart too.

"Why should she take him from me?" sh