THE HOME FARM

I must own that I was distinctly uncomfortable as I followed Banks into

the same room in which I had sat on my previous visit to the Home Farm.

The influence of tradition and habit would not let me alone. I cared

nothing for the Jervaises' opinion, but I resented the unfairness of it

and had all the innocent man's longing to prove his innocence--a feat that

was now become for ever impossible. By accepting Banks's invitation, I had

confirmed the worst suspicions the Jervaises could possibly have harboured

against me.

Indeed, it seems probable that I was now revealing more shameful depths of

duplicity than their most depraved imaginings had been able to picture. As

I entered the room, I looked first at Frank, and his dominant emotion,

just then, appeared to be surprise. For a moment I had a sense of

reprieve. I guessed that he had not been truly convinced of the truth of

his own accusations against me. But any relief I may have felt was

dissipated at once. I saw Jervaise's look of surprise give place to a kind

of perplexed anger, an expression that I could only read as conveying his

amazement that any gentleman (I am sure his thought was playing about that

word) could be such a blackguard as I was now proving myself to be.

Ronnie Turnbull, also, evidently shared that opinion. The boyish and

rather theatrical movement with which he turned his back upon me, showed

at once that he had been coached in the suspicions that were now so

finally clinched.

"This fellow simply isn't worth speaking to," was the inarticulate message

of his gesture.

And certainly I gave neither of them any occasion to speak to me. Banks's

opening plunged us into one of those chaotic dialogues which are only made

more confused by any additional contribution.

"What have you come up here for?" Banks asked, displaying his immediate

determination to treat the invaders without respect of class on this

common ground of his father's home.

"That's our affair," Frank snapped. He looked nervously vicious, I

thought, like a timid-minded dog turned desperate.

"What the devil do you mean?" Turnbull asked at the same moment, and

Brenda got up from her chair and tried to address some explanation to her

lover through the ominous preparatory snarlings of the melée.

I heard her say, "Arthur! They've been trying to..." but lost the rest in

the general shindy.

Turnbull, by virtue of his lung-power, was the most audible of the four.

"You've jolly well got to understand, my good man," he was saying, "that

the sooner you get out of this the better"; and went on with more

foolishness about Banks having stolen the motor--all painfully tactless

stuff, if he still had the least intention of influencing Brenda, but he

was young and arrogant and not at all clever.

Banks and Jervaise were sparring at each other all the time that Turnbull

fulminated, and Brenda's soprano came in like a flageolet obbligato--a

word or two here and there ringing out with a grateful clearness above the

masculine accompaniment.

I dared, in the confusion, to glance at Anne, and she looked up at me at

the same moment. She was slightly withdrawn from the tumult that drew

together about the counter of the sturdy oak table in the centre of the

room. She was sitting in the towering old settle by the fireplace, leaning

a little forward as if she awaited her opportunity to spring in and

determine the tumult when something of this grotesque male violence had

been exhausted.

She looked at me, I thought, with just a touch of supplication, a look

that I misinterpreted as a request to use my influence in stopping this

din of angry voices that was so obviously serving no useful purpose. But I

felt no inclination to respond to that appeal of hers. I had an idea that

she might be going to announce her engagement to Jervaise, an announcement

that would critically affect the whole situation; and I had no wish to

help her in solving the immediate problem by those means.

Perhaps she read in my face something of the sullen resentment I was

feeling, for she leaned back quickly into the corner of the settle, with a

movement that seemed to indicate a temporary resignation to the

inevitable. I saw her as taking cover from this foolish masculine din

about the table; but I had no doubt that she was still awaiting her

opportunity.

It was Jervaise who brought back the unintelligible disputants to

reasonable speech. He stopped speaking, stepped back on to the hearth-rug,

and then addressed the loudly vociferous Turnbull.

"Ronnie!" Jervaise said in a tone that arrested attention, and having got

his man's ear, added, "Half a minute!"

"But look here, you know," Turnbull protested, still on the same note of

aggressive violence. "What I mean to say is that this feller seems to

confoundedly well imagine..."

"Do for God's sake _shut up!_" Jervaise returned with a scowl.

"I suppose you think that I haven't any right..." Turnbull began in a

rather lower voice; and Brenda at last finding a chance to make herself

heard, finished him by saying quickly,--

"Certainly you haven't; no right whatever to come here--and _brawl_..."

She spoke breathlessly, as though she were searching in the brief

interlude of an exhausting struggle for some insult that would fatally

wound and offend him. She tried to show him in a sentence that he was

nothing more to her than a blundering, inessential fool, interfering in

important business that was no concern of his. And although the hurry of

her mind did not permit her to find the deadly phrase she desired, the

sharpness of her anxiety to wound him was clear enough.

"Oh! of course, if you think that..." he said, paused as if seeking for

some threat of retaliation, and then flung himself, the picture of

dudgeon, into a chair by the wall. He turned his back towards Brenda and

glared steadfastly at his rival. I received the impression that the poor

deluded boy was trying to revenge himself on Brenda. At the back of his

mind he seemed still to regard her escapade as a foolish piece of bravado,

undertaken chiefly to torture himself. His attitude was meant to convey

that the joke had gone far enough, and that he would not stand much more

of it.

For a time at least he was, fortunately, out of the piece. Perhaps he

thought the influence of his attitude must presently take effect; that

Brenda, whom he so habitually adored with his eyes, would be intimidated

by his threat of being finally offended?

The three other protagonists took no more notice of the sulky Ronnie, but

they could not at once recover any approach to sequence.

"I want to know why you've come up here," Banks persisted.

"That's not the point," Jervaise began in a tone that I thought was meant

to be conciliatory.

"But it is--partly," Brenda put in.

"My dear girl, do let's have the thing clear," her brother returned, but

she diverted his apparent intention of making a plain statement by an

impatient,--

"Oh! it's all _clear_ enough."

"But it isn't, by any means," Jervaise said.

"To us it is," Banks added, meaning, I presume, that he and Brenda had no

doubts as to their intentions.

"You're going to persist in the claim you made this morning?" Jervaise

asked.

Banks smiled and shrugged his shoulders.

"Don't be silly, Frank," Brenda interpreted. "You must know that we can't

do anything else."

"It's foolish to say you _can't_," he returned irritably, "when so

obviously you _can_."

"Well, anyway, we're going to," Banks affirmed with a slight

inconsequence.

"And do you purpose to stay on here?" Jervaise said sharply, as if he were

posing an insuperable objection.

"Not likely," Banks replied. "We're going to Canada, the whole lot of us."

"Your father and mother, too?"

"Yes, if I can persuade 'em; and I can," Banks said.

"You haven't tried yet?"

"No, I haven't."

"Don't they know anything about this? Anything, I mean, before last

night's affair?"

"Practically nothing at all," Banks said. "Of course, nothing whatever

about last night."

"And you honestly think..." began Jervaise.

"That'll be all right, won't it, Anne?" Banks replied.

But Anne, still leaning back in the corner of the settle, refused to

answer.

Jervaise turned and looked down at her. "If you all went...?" he said,

giving his incomplete sentence the sound of a question.

"Oh! I should certainly go, too," she replied.

Jervaise frowned moodily. I could see that he was caught in an awkward

dilemma, but I was not absolutely sure as to the form it took. Had Anne

made conditions? Her remark seemed, I thought, to hint a particular

stipulation. Had she tried to coerce him with the threat of accompanying

her brother to Canada unless the engagement to Brenda was openly

sanctioned by the family?

"But you must see how impossible it is," Jervaise said, still looking at

Anne.

"_We_ don't think so," Brenda put in.

"You don't understand," her brother returned savagely.

"_You_ don't," Brenda replied.

Jervaise snorted impatiently, but he had enough control of himself to

avoid the snare of being drawn into a bickering match.

"It isn't as if the decision rested with me," he went on, looking down at

the hearth-rug, but still, I fancy, addressing himself almost exclusively

to Anne. "I can't make my father and mother see things as you do. No one

could. Why can't you compromise?"

"Oh! _How_?" Brenda broke out with a fierce contempt.

"Agree to separate--for a time," Jervaise said. "Let Banks go to Canada

and start a farm or something, and afterwards you could join him without

any open scandal."

"Any mortal thing to save a scandal, of course," Brenda commented

scornfully.

"Would _you_ be prepared to do that?" Jervaise asked, turning to Banks.

I thought Banks seemed a trifle irresolute, as though the bribe of finally

possessing Brenda was tempting enough to outweigh any other consideration.

But he looked at her before replying, and her contemptuous shake of the

head was completely decisive. He could not question any determination of

hers.

"No, I wouldn't," he said.

"But look here, Brenda, why..." Jervaise began on a note of desperate

reasonableness.

"Because I'm going out _with_ him," Brenda said. They might have chased

that argument round for half an hour if Ronnie had not once more

interposed.

His dudgeon had been slowly giving place to a shocked surprise. It was

being borne in upon his reluctant mind that Brenda and Banks honestly

intended to get married. And here was Frank Jervaise, for some mistaken

purpose of his own, calmly admitting the possibility of the outrage,

instead of scorning the bare idea of it with violence.

"I think you're making a ghastly mistake, Frank," he said with a composure

that was intended to be extremely ominous.

Jervaise clutched at the interruption, probably to give himself a little

more time. The women were proving so unamenable to his excellent

reasoning. One simply contradicted him, and the other refused to speak.

"What's a mistake, Ronnie?" he asked.

"Listening to them at all," Turnbull said, with a preposterous attempt to

be dignified. He would not look at Brenda as he continued, but he was

certainly aware that she had turned towards him when he spoke, and the

consciousness that she was watching him steadily increased his

embarrassment. "It's perfectly absurd, I mean, to talk as if you and your

people would allow the thing to go on--under any circumstances--perfect

rot! Why can't you say at once that it's got to stop--absolutely,

and--Good Lord!--I don't care what any one thinks--if I were in your place

I'd jolly well sling Banks off the premises--I tell you I would--" he

got to his feet, his vehemence was increasing, as if he would shout down

Brenda's silent disdain--"I'd confoundedly well kick him out of the

county..." He looked almost equal to the task as he stood there roaring

like a young bull-calf; but although he could have given his rival a good

three stone in weight there was, I fancy, a difference in the quality of

their muscles that might have left the final advantage with Banks in a

rough-and-tumble engagement.

But despite, or perhaps on account of his complete ineptitude, I had a

feeling of sympathy for Turnbull. It must have been very exasperating for

him to stand there, roaring out his sincerest convictions and to be

received by every one of us with a forbearing contempt.

Even Brenda expressed something of pity for him.

"My dear Ronnie, don't be absolutely idiotic," she said, forbearingly, but

rather as though she warned him that he had said quite enough.

He breathed heavily, resentfully, but still declined to look at her. "Of

course if you'd sooner I went away altogether..." he remarked.

"I don't see that you can help us by staying," Brenda said.

"I mean for good," he explained tragically.

I heard afterwards that he had been in love with Brenda since she was nine

years old, but I might have inferred the fact from his present attitude.

He simply could not believe, as yet, that she would let him go--for good,

as he said. No doubt she had tricked and plagued him so often in the past

that the present situation seemed to him nothing more than the repetition

of a familiar experience.

Brenda must have realised that, too; but, no doubt, she shrank from

wounding him mortally in public. The ten years of familiar intercourse

between her and Ronnie were not to be obliterated in a day, not even by

the fury of her passion for Arthur Banks.

"I know," she said. "But you _are_ interrupting, Ronnie. Do go!"

"And leave you here?" He was suddenly encouraged again by her tone. He

looked down at her, now; pleading like a great puppy, beseeching her to

put a stop to this very painful game.

"Surely, Ronnie, you must realise that I--mean it, this time," she said.

"Not that you're going to ... going to Canada," he begged.

"Yes. Yes. Definitely and absolutely finally yes," she said.

"With--him?"

"Yes."

"But, _Brenda_!" The long-drawn appeal of her name showed that the full

bitterness of the truth was coming home to him at last.

"I'm sorry," she said, and the sound of it was in some way painfully

final.

"It isn't because..." he began, but she anticipated his well-known reasons

by saying,--

"It's nothing to do with you or with anything you've done, nothing

whatever. I'm sorry, Ronnie, but it's fate--just fate. Do go, now. I'll

see you again before--before we go."

And still he stood for an instant undecided; and I could see the struggle

that was going on in him, between the influence of Harrow and Oxford and

those of the honest, simple primitive man. He knew that the right,

conventional thing for him to do was to be magnanimous; to admit that he

was the defeated lover, and to say something that would prove how splendid

he could be in the moment of disaster. The traditions of Harrow, Oxford,

and the melodrama united to give him an indication of the proper conduct

of the situation, and against them was ranged nothing more than one feral

impulse to take Banks by the throat and settle his blasphemous assumption

of rivalry off-hand.

But it was, I think, a third influence that decided the struggle for that

time. His glare of wrath at Banks had been followed by one last yearning

look at Brenda, and some sentimental realisation of his loss rose and

choked him, temporarily superseding the powers both of make-believe and

instinct. One lesson he had learnt at Harrow and Oxford so thoroughly that

he re-acted to it even in this supreme crisis of his life. He might give

expression to brutal passion, but in no circumstances whatever must he

break down and weep in public.

He turned quickly and blundered out of the room with a stumbling eagerness

to be alone that was extraordinarily pathetic.

"You'll admit, B., that it's cursedly hard lines on Ronnie after all these

years," Frank said with what sounded like genuine emotion.

She took that up at once. "I know it is," she said. "It's going to be hard

lines on lots of people, but there's no way out of it. You may think it's

silly tosh to talk about Fate; but it _is_ Fate."

And then she looked at Banks with something in her expression that was

surely enough to compensate him for any pain or sacrifice he might have to

endure for her.

"_We_ can't help it, can we, Arthur?" she said.

He was too moved to answer. He set his lips tightly together and shook his

head, gazing at her with a look of adoration and confidence that was

almost violent in its protestation of love.

Jervaise turned round and leaned his forehead against the high

mantelpiece. I looked out of the window. Anne remained hidden in the

corner of the settle. We all, no doubt, had the same feeling that this

love-affair was showing itself as something too splendid to be interfered

with. Whether or not it had the qualities that make for endurance, it had

a present force that dwarfed every other emotion. Those two lovers ruled

us by their perfect devotion to each other. I felt ashamed of my presence

there, as if I had intruded upon some fervent religious ceremony. They

were both so sincere, so gallant, and so proud.

It was Banks who re-started the conversation. The solitude we had

permitted to the lovers was at once too little and too much for them. What

had passed between them by an exchange of signals in the brief interval, I

could only guess; they certainly had not spoken, but Banks's new subject

suggested that they had somehow agreed to divert the interest momentarily

from themselves.

"I've brought Mr. Melhuish back with me," he said. "He's going to stay the

night with us." He may have been addressing Brenda in answer to some look

of inquiry that had indicated my resolutely unconscious back.

Since Turnbull had gone, I was more than ever the outsider and intruder,

and I was all too keenly aware of that fact as I turned back towards the

room. My embarrassment was not relieved by the slightly perplexed

astonishment the announcement had evoked in the faces of the two women.

"But I thought you were staying at the Hall," Brenda said, looking at me

with that air of suspicion to which I was rapidly growing accustomed.

"I was," I said; "but for reasons that your brother may be able to

explain, I'm staying there no longer."

She looked at Jervaise, then, but he had no reply ready. I had put him in

a difficult position. I had a chance to revenge myself at last.

"I don't understand, Frank," Brenda prompted him; and Anne began to come

to life for the first time since I had entered the room--there was a new

effect of mischief about her, as if she had partly guessed the cause of my

expulsion from the Hall.

"It's a long story," Jervaise prevaricated.

"But one that I think you ought to tell," I said, "in justice to me."

"We found that Melhuish had been, most unwarrantably, interfering in--in

this affair of yours, B.," he grumbled; "and, in any case, it's no

business of his."

Brenda's dark eyebrows lifted with that expression of surprised

questioning to which she could give such unusual effect. I suppose it

emphasised that queer contrast--unique in my experience--between her

naturally fair hair, and her black eyebrows and eyelashes. I have to

emphasise the fact that the straw gold of her abundant vital hair was its

_natural_ colour. She had often, I believe, threatened to dye it, in order

to avoid the charge of having already done so.

"What piffle!" she remarked. "How has Mr. Melhuish interfered? Why, this

is the first time I've seen him since last night at the dance. Besides,"

she glanced at me with a half-whimsical touch of apology, "I hardly know

him."

"Oh! it's some romantic rot of his, I suppose," Jervaise returned

sullenly. "I never thought it was serious."

"But," Anne interposed, "it sounds very serious...if Mr. Melhuish has had

to leave the Hall in the middle of his visit--and come to us." I inferred

that she was deliberately overlooking my presence in the room for some

purpose of her own. She certainly spoke as if I were not present.

"Partly a misunderstanding," Jervaise said. "No reason why he shouldn't

come back with me now if he wants to."

"You would in that case explain, of course, how the misunderstanding

arose?" I put in.

"_I_ don't know what your game is," he returned allusively.

"I never had one," I said.

"Looked infernally suspicious," was his grudging answer.

The two girls exchanged a look of understanding, but I had no notion what

they intended by it. I had not learnt, then, how cleverly they played up

to each other.

"Yes, but suspicious of what, Mr. Jervaise?" Anne said, taking up the

cross-examination.

"Spying upon us," Jervaise growled.

"Upon you or me?" asked Brenda.

"Both," Jervaise said.

"But why?" asked Anne.

"Lord knows," Jervaise replied.

I made no effort to interrupt them. The two girls were clearing my

character for me by the simple obvious method that I had not had the wit

to adopt for myself. I might have argued and protested for hours, and the

only result would have been to confirm Jervaise's suspicions. Confronted

by an innocent demand for explanation, he had not a leg to stand on.

Brenda's eyebrows went up again, with that slightly bizarre, exotic air

which was so arresting. She spoke to me this time.

"And do you mean to say that they were all so horrid to you that you had

to come away?" she asked.

"Precisely that," I said.

"But you don't tell us what Mr. Melhuish has _done!_" Anne persisted,

continuing her cross-examination of Jervaise.

"Well, for one thing, he went out to meet your brother at three o'clock

this morning," he replied grudgingly.

"Didn't come out to meet me," Banks put in. "We did meet all right, but it

was the first time we'd ever seen each other."

We all four looked at Jervaise, awaiting his next piece of evidence with

the expectant air of children watching a conjurer.

He began to lose his temper. "I can't see that this has got anything to do

with what we're discussing..." he said, but I had no intention of letting

him off too easily. He had saved me the trouble of making tedious

explanations, and my character had been cleared before Anne and Brenda,

which two things were all that I really cared about in this connection;

but I wanted, for other reasons, to make Jervaise appear foolish. So I

interrupted him by saying,--

"Hadn't you better tell them about Miss Tattersall?"

He turned on me, quite savagely. "What the devil has this affair of ours

got to do with you, Melhuish?" he asked.

"Nothing whatever," I said. "You dragged me into it in the first instance

by bringing me up here last night, but since then I haven't interfered one

way or the other. What does affect me, however, is that you and your

family have--well--insulted me, and for that you do owe me, at least, an

explanation."

"What made you come up here, now?" he asked with that glowering legal air

of his; thrusting the question at me as if I must, now, be finally

confuted.

"After you ran away from me in the avenue," I said promptly, "it seemed

that the only thing left for me to do was to walk to Hurley Junction; but

a quarter of a mile from the Park gate I found your car drawn up by the

side of the road. And as I had no sort of inclination to walk fourteen

miles on a broiling afternoon, I decided to wait by the car until some one

came to fetch it. And when presently Banks came, I tried my best to

persuade him to take me to the station in it. He refused on the grounds

that he wanted to take the car back at once to the garage; but when I

explained my difficulty to him, his hospitable mind prompted him to offer

me temporary refuge at the Home Farm. He brought me back to introduce me,

and we found you here. Simple, isn't it?"

Jervaise scowled at the hearth-rug. "All been a cursed misunderstanding

from first to last," he growled.

"But what was that about Grace Tattersall?" Brenda asked. "If you'd

accused _her_ of spying, I could have understood it. She was trying to

pump me for all she was worth yesterday afternoon."

"I've admitted that there must have been some misunderstanding," Jervaise

said. "For goodness' sake, let's drop this question of Melhuish's

interference and settle the more important one of what we're going to do

about--you."

"I resent that word 'interference,'" I put in.

"Oh! resent it, then," Jervaise snarled.

"Really, I think Mr. Melhuish is perfectly justified," Brenda said. "I

feel horribly ashamed of the way you've been treating him at home. I

should never have thought that the mater..."

"Can't you understand that she's nearly off her head with worrying about

you?" Jervaise interrupted.

"No, I can't," Brenda returned. "If it had been Olive, I could. But I

should have thought they would all have been jolly glad to see the last of

me. They've always given me that impression, anyhow."

"Not in this way," her brother grumbled.

"What do you mean by that exactly?" Anne asked with a great seriousness.

I think Jervaise was beginning to lose his nerve. He was balanced so

dangerously between the anxiety to maintain the respectability of the

Jervaises and his passion, or whatever it was, for Anne. Such, at least,

was my inference; although how he could possibly reconcile his two

devotions I could not imagine, unless his intentions with regard to Anne

were frankly shameful. And Jervaise must, indeed, be an even grosser fool

than I supposed him to be if he could believe for one instant that Anne

was the sort of woman who would stoop to a common intrigue with him. For

it could be nothing more than that. If they loved each other, they could

do no less than follow the shining example of Brenda and Anne's brother. I

could see Anne doing that, and with a still more daring spirit than the

other couple had so far displayed. I could not see her as Frank Jervaise's

mistress. Moreover, I could not believe now, even after that morning's

scene in the wood, that she really cared for him. If she did, she must

have been an actress of genius, since, so far as I had been able to

observe, her attitude towards him during the last half-hour had most

nearly approached one of slightly amused contempt.

Jervaise's evident perplexity was notably aggravated by Anne's question.

"Well, naturally, my father and mother don't want an open scandal," he

said irritably.

"But why a scandal?" asked Anne. "If Arthur and Brenda were married and

went to Canada?"

"I don't say that _I_ think it would be a scandal," he said. "I'm only

telling you the way that _they'd_ certainly see it. It might have been

different if your brother had never been in our service. You must see

that. _We_ know, of course, but other people don't, and we shall never be

able to explain to them. People like the Turnbulls and the Atkinsons and

all that lot will say that Brenda eloped with the chauffeur. It's no good

beating about the bush--that's the plain fact we've got to face."

"Then, hadn't we better face it?" Anne returned with a flash of

indignation. "Or do you think you can persuade Arthur to go back to

Canada, alone?"

Jervaise grunted uneasily.

"You know it's no earthly, Frank," Brenda said. "Why can't you be a sport

and go back and tell them that they might as well give in at once?"

"Oh! my dear girl, you must know perfectly well that they'll _never_ give

in," her brother replied.

"Mr. Jervaise might," Banks put in.

Frank turned to him sharply. "What do you mean by that?" he asked.

"He'd have given in this morning, if it hadn't been for you," Banks said,

staring with his most dogged expression at Jervaise.

"What makes you think so?" Jervaise retaliated.

"What he said, and the way he behaved," Banks asserted, the English yeoman

stock in him still very apparent.

"You're mistaken," Jervaise snapped.

"Give me a chance to prove it, then," was Banks's counter.

"How?"

"I've got to take that car back. Give me a chance for another talk with

Mr. Jervaise; alone this time."

I looked at Banks with a sudden feeling of anxiety. I was afraid that he

meant at last to use that "pull" he had hinted at on the hill; and I had

an intuitive shrinking from the idea of his doing that. This open defiance

was fine and upright. The other attitude suggested to my mind the

conception of something cowardly, a little base and underhand. He looked,

I admit, the picture of sturdy virtue as he stood there challenging his

late master to permit this test of old Jervaise's attitude, but the prize

at stake was so inestimably precious to Banks, that it must have altered

all his values. He would, I am sure, have committed murder for Brenda--any

sort of murder.

Frank Jervaise did not respond at once to the gage that had been offered.

He appeared to be moodily weighing the probabilities before he decided his

policy. And Brenda impatiently prompted him by saying,--

"Well, I don't see what possible objection you can have to that."

"Only want to save the pater any worry I can," Jervaise said. "He has been

more cut up than any one over this business."

"The pater has?" queried Brenda on a note of amazement. "I shouldn't have

expected him to be half as bad as the mater and Olive."

"Well, he is. He's worse--much worse," Jervaise asserted.

I was listening to the others, but I was watching Banks, and I saw him

sneer when that assertion was made. The expression seemed to have been

forced out of him against his will; just a quick jerk downwards of the

corners of his mouth that portrayed a supreme contempt for old Jervaise's

distress. But that sneer revealed Banks's opinion to me better than

anything he had said or done. I knew then that he was aware of something

concerning the master of the Hall that was probably unknown either to

Brenda or Frank, something that Banks had loyally hidden even from his

sister. He covered his sneer so quickly that I believe no one else noticed

it.

"But, surely, it would be better for the pater to see Arthur and have done

with it," Brenda was saying.

"Oh! I dare say," Jervaise agreed with his usual air of grudging the least

concession. "Are you ready to go now?" he asked, addressing Banks.

Banks nodded. "I'll pick up the car on the way," he said.

"I'll come with you--as far as the car," Brenda said, and the pair of them

went out together.

Jervaise stretched himself with a self-conscious air. "It will take him

the best part of an hour getting the car into the garage and all that," he

remarked, looking at me.

I could see, of course, that he wanted me to go; his hint had been,

indeed, almost indecently pointed; and I had no wish to intrude myself

upon them, if Anne's desire coincided with his. I got to my feet and stood

like an awkward dummy trying to frame some excuse for leaving the room. I

could think of nothing that was not absurdly obvious. I was on the point

of trying to save the last remnant of my dignity by walking out, when Anne

relieved my embarrassment. I knew that she had been watching me, but I was

afraid to look at her. I cannot say why, exactly, but I felt that if I

looked at her just then I should give myself away before Jervaise.

"I must go and see about Mr. Melhuish's room," she said.

She was half-way to the door when Jervaise stopped her.

"I should rather like to speak to you for a minute first," he remarked,

and scowled again at me.

"There's nothing more to be said until Arthur has seen Mr. Jervaise," Anne

replied, as though any subject other than the affair Brenda, could not

conceivably be of interest to her.

"It wasn't about them," Jervaise said awkwardly.

"What was it, then?" Anne asked. I dared to look at her, now, and her face

was perfectly serious as she added, "Was it about the milk, or eggs, or

anything?"

Without doubt there was a delicious strain of minx in her!

Jervaise lost his temper. I believe that if I had offered to fight him,

then, he would have welcomed the opportunity.

"Oh! you know what I want to say," he snorted.

"Then why not say it?" Anne replied.

He turned savagely upon me. "Haven't you got the common sense..." he

began, but Anne cut him short.

"Oh! we don't suspect _our_ guests of spying," she said.

I was nearly sorry for Jervaise at that moment. He could not have looked

any more vindictive than he looked already, but he positively trembled

with anger. He could not endure to be thwarted. Nevertheless, he displayed

a certain measure of self-control.

"Very well," he said as calmly as he could. "If you're going to take that

tone..."

"Yes?" Anne prompted him. She showed no sign of being in any way

disconcerted.

"It will hardly help your brother," he concluded.

"I made a mistake in trying to help him this morning," she said. "I shan't

make the same mistake twice in one day."

He evidently knew what she meant, although I did not. His heavy eyebrows

twitched, and then, with a half-contemptuous shrug of his shoulders he

strode out of the room with an air of leaving us to the doom we so justly

deserved.

"The worst of it is that the second mistake doesn't cancel the first,"

Anne remarked thoughtfully.