r
being married? Non?" as he shook hands joyously all round, with both
hands at once.

"Not a bit," laughed Graeme. "We're all as happy as sandboys."

"Comment donc--sandboys? What is that?"

"Happy little boys who dispense with clothes and paddle all day in the
sand and water."

"Ah--you have been bathing! What energie! And you danced till--?"

"About four o'clock, I suppose. The sun was just thinking of rising as
we were thinking of retiring."

"But it is marvellous! And you are not tired?"

"The bathe has freshened us all up," said Margaret.

Then Mrs. Vicar came out at sound of their voices, and felicitated
them, and begged them to rest a while in the shade. But they were all
hungry, and Charles Svendt laughingly asserted that he had swallowed
so much salt-water, in rescuing Miss Penny from a watery grave, that
his constitution absolutely needed a tiny tot of whisky, or the
consequences might be serious.

So they went laughingly on their way, and Charles tried his best to
get Miss Penny to go and show him the way to the Bel-Air, pleading
absolute confusion still as to the points of the compass and the lie
of the land.

He was to lunch with them at the Red House, but insisted on going home
first to straighten up and make himself presentable. So they led him
to the Avenue, and set his face straight down it, and bade him follow
his nose and turn neither to the right hand nor to the left, and then
they turned off through the fields by their own short-cut, and went
merrily home.

PART THE SIXTH

I

Graeme was just finishing a beautiful knot in his tie, when he heard
hasty feet crossing the verandah to the open front door. There was
some unknown quantity in them that gave him sudden start.

"Graeme!" sharp, hoarse,--a voice he did not recognise.

He ran hastily out of the east bedroom, which he was using as a
dressing-room.

"Hello there!" as he sprang down the stairs, "Why--Pixley? What's
wrong, man?"

For Charles Pixley was standing there, leaning in at the doorway,
looking as though he would fall headlong but for the supporting jamb.
He had a brown envelope in his hand and a crumpled pink telegram. His
face was white, and drawn, and haggard. His very figure seemed to have
shrunk in these few minutes. Never had Graeme seen so ghastly a change
in a man in so short a time.

Before Pixley could speak Miss Penny came hurrying along the path with
a face full of sympathetic anxiety.

"What