nd a July so perfect with sunlight and summer that it seemed some bird
at last must break the silence of the famed beech-grove! All the world
went to it. The motor-cars and the coaches streamed up over Duncton Hill
and wound down the Midhurst Road to pleasant Charlton, with its cottages
and gardens of flowers. Martin Hillyard went too.

As he walked away from Captain Graham's eyrie he met Sir Chichester
Splay in Pall Mall.

"Where have you been these eight months?" inquired Sir Chichester. "'The
Dark Tower' is still running, I see. A good play, Mr. Hillyard."

"But not a great play, of course," said Martin, his lips twitching to a
smile.

"I have been looking for you everywhere," remarked Sir Chichester. "You
must stay with us for Goodwood. My wife will never forgive me if I don't
secure you."

Hillyard gladly consented. It would be his first visit to the high
racecourse on the downs--and--and he might find Stella Croyle among the
company. It would be a little easier for him and for her too, if they
met this second time in a house of many visitors. He had no comfortable
news to give to her, and he had shrunk from seeking her out in the
Bayswater Road. Wrap the truth in words however careful, he could not
but wound her. Yet sooner or later she must hear of his return, and
avoidance of her would but tell the story more cruelly than his lips.

"Yes, I will gladly come," he said, "if I may come down on the first
day."

He was delayed in London until midday, and so motored after luncheon
through Guildford and Chiddingfold and Petworth to Rackham Park. The
park ran down to the Midhurst Road, and when Hillyard was shown into the
drawing-room he walked across to the window and looked out over a valley
of fields and hedges and low, dark ridges to the downs lying blue in the
sunlight and the black forests on their slopes.

From an embrasure a girl rose with a book in her hand.

"Let me introduce myself, Mr. Hillyard. I am Joan Whitworth, and make my
home here with my aunt. They are all at Goodwood, of course, but they
should be back at any moment."

She rang the bell and ordered tea. Somewhere Hillyard realised he had
seen the girl before. She was about eighteen years old, he guessed, very
pretty, with a wealth of fair hair deepening into brown, dark blue eyes
shaded with long dark lashes and a colour of health abloom in her
cheeks.

"You have been in Egypt, uncle tells me."

"In the Sudan," Hillyard corrected. "I