ill tell Cecil to leave you
alone. But remember that he is our host. You must really be civil to
him."

She strolled across the lawn to where Cecil was still knocking the
croquet balls about. Jeanne sank into her place, and Forrest looked at
her for a few moments attentively.

"You are a strange child," he said at last.

She glanced towards him as though she found his speech an impertinence.
Then she looked away across the old-fashioned, strangely arranged
garden, with its irregular patches of many coloured flowers, its
wind-swept shrubs, its flag-staff rising from the grassy knoll at the
seaward extremity. She watched the seagulls, wheeling in from the sea,
and followed the line of smoke of a distant steamer. She seemed to find
all these things more interesting than conversation.

"You do not like me," he remarked quietly. "You have never liked me."

"I have liked very few of my stepmother's friends," she answered, "any
more than I like the life which I have been compelled to lead since I
left school."

"You would prefer to be back there, perhaps?" he remarked, a little
sarcastically.

"I should," she answered. "It was prison of a sort, but one was at
least free to choose one's friends."

"If," he suggested, "you could make up your mind that I was a person at
any rate to be tolerated, I think that I could make things easier for
you. Your stepmother is always inclined to follow my advice, and I
could perhaps get her to take you to quieter places, where you could
lead any sort of life you liked."

"Thank you," she answered. "Before very long I shall be my own
mistress. Until then I must make the best of things. If you wish to do
something for me you can answer a question."

"Ask it, then," he begged at once. "If I can, I shall be only too glad."

"You can tell me something which since the other night," she said, "has
been worrying me a good deal. You can tell me who it was that drove
Lord Ronald to the station the morning he went away. I thought that he
sent his chauffeur away two days ago, and that there was no one here
who could drive the car."

Forrest was momentarily taken aback. He answered, however, with
scarcely any noticeable hesitation.

"I did," he answered. "I didn't make much of a job of it, and the car
has been scarcely fit to use since, but I managed it somehow, or rather
we did between us. He came and knocked me up about five o'clock, and
begged me to come and try."

She looked at him wi