to her for asking no questions, but he would rather have
taken Isabel direct to Val. Romance in bud requires a delicate
hand. Now Mrs. Jack Bendish had all the bourgeois virtues except
modesty and discretion.

CHAPTER X

The Wancote affair made a nine days' wonder in the Plain. Indeed
it even got into the London papers, under such titles as "A
Domestic Tragedy" or "Duel with a Dog": and, while the Morning
Post added a thumbnail sketch of Captain Hyde's distinguished
career, the Spectator took Ben as the text of a "middle" on "The
Abuse of Asylum Administration in Rural Districts."

Lawrence himself, when he had despatched Hubert Verney to the
vicarage, would have liked to cut his responsibility. But it
could not be done: first there was the village policeman to run
to earth and information to be laid before him, and then, since
Brown's first flustered impulse was to arrest all concerned from
Lawrence to Clara Janaway, Lawrence had to walk down with him to
Wharton to interview Jack Bendish, as both the nearest magistrate
and the nearest sensible man. But after pouring his tale into
Jack's sympathetic ear he felt entitled to wash his hands of the
affair. Instead of going back to Wanhope with the relief party
he got Bendish to drop him at the field path to Wanhope: and he
slipped up to his room by a garden door, bathed, changed, and
came down to lunch without trace of discomposure. Gaston,
curtly ordered to take his master's clothes away and burn them,
was eaten by curiosity, but in vain.

Even before his cousin, Lawrence did not own to his adventure
till the servants had left the room. If it could have been kept
dark he would not have owned to it at all. He did so only
because it must soon be common property and he did not care to be
taxed with affectation.

When, bit by bits his story came out across the liqueur glasses
and the early strawberries, Major Clowes laid his head back and
roared with laughter. Lawrence was annoyed: he had not found it
amusing and he felt that his cousin had a macabre and uncomfortable
sense of humour. But Bernard, wiping the tears from his eyes,
developed unabashed his idea of a good joke. "Hark to him! Now
isn't that Lawrence all over? What! can't you run down for
twenty-four hours to a hamlet the size of Chilmark but you must
bring your faics divers in your pocket?"

"It isn't my fault if you have dangerous lunatics at large," said
Lawrence, helping himself