mmodore Graham with a sigh.

Hillyard rose and took his hat.

"Well, I am very grateful to you, Mr. Hillyard," said Graham. "I can't
say anything more to you now. Things, as you know, are altogether very
doubtful. We may slip over into smooth water. On the other hand," and he
twiddled his thumbs serenely, "we may be at war in a month. If that were
to be the case, I might want to talk with you again. Will you leave your
address with Miss Chayne?"

Hillyard was led out by another door, no doubt so that he might not meet
the impatient admiral. He might have gone away disheartened from that
interview with its vague promises. But there are other and often surer
indications than words. When Miss Chayne took down his address, her
manner had quite changed towards him. She had now a frank and pleasant
comradeship. The official had gone. Her smile said as plainly as print
could do: "You are with us now."

Meanwhile Commodore Graham read through once more the letter of Paul
Bendish. He turned from that to a cabled report from Khartum of the
opinion which various governors of districts had formed concerning the
ways and the discretion of Martin Hillyard. Then once more he rang his
bell.

"There was a list of suitable private yachts to be made out," he said.

"It is ready," replied Miss Chayne, and she brought it to him.

Over that list Commodore Graham spent a great deal of time. In the end
his finger rested on the name of the steam-yacht _Dragonfly_, owned by
Sir Charles Hardiman, Baronet.

CHAPTER IX

ENTER THE HEROINE IN ANYTHING BUT WHITE SATIN

Goodwood in the year nineteen hundred and fourteen! There were some,
throwers of stones, searchers after a new thing on which to build a
reputation, who have been preaching these many years past that the
temper of England had changed, its solidity all dissolved into froth,
and that a new race of neurotics was born on Mafeking night. Just
ninety-nine years before this Goodwood meeting, when Napoleon and the
veterans of the Imperial Guard were knocking at the gates of Brussels, a
famous ball was given. Goodwood of the year nineteen-fourteen, _mutatis
mutandis_, did but repeat that scene, the same phlegmatic enjoyment of
the festival, the same light-heartedness and sure confidence under the
great shadow, and the same ending.

The whispered word went round so that there should be no panic or alarm,
and of a sudden every officer was gone. Goodwood of nineteen fourteen
a