gers about her
own.

"I sometimes think I can't go on," she whispered through her tears.
"It's like being in prison, and I want to run away. Only I can't--I
can't. I've got to bear it all my life."

A slight sound from the open window followed this confidence, and Phil
looked up sharply. Audrey had not heard it, and she did not notice his
movement.

Her head was still bent; and over it Phil, glaring like a tiger, met
the quiet, critical eyes of the girl's husband.

He rose to his feet the next instant, but he did not utter a word.

As for Tudor, he stood quite motionless, quite inscrutable, for the
space of seconds, looking gravely in upon them. Then, to Phil's
unspeakable amazement, he turned deliberately and walked away. There was
thick matting on Mrs. Raleigh's veranda, and his receding footsteps made
no sound.

CHAPTER VII

AN UNPLEASANT INTERVIEW

"There!" said Audrey, a few seconds later, "I've been a perfect idiot, I
know; but I'm better now. Tell me, do I look as if I had been crying?"

She raised her pretty, woebegone face to his and smiled very faintly.

There was something unmistakably grim about Phil at that moment, and she
wondered why.

"Of course you do," he said bluntly.

Audrey got up and peered at herself uneasily in a mirror.

"It doesn't show much," she said, after a careful inspection. "And,
anyhow"--turning round to him--"I don't know what you have to be cross
about. It--it was all your fault!"

Phil groaned and held his peace. She would know soon enough, he
reflected.

Audrey drew nearer to him.

"Tell me what he said to Major Raleigh, Phil," she said rather
tremulously.

He shrugged his shoulders and yielded.

"He only said that he wished your discretion equalled your promptitude
in emergencies," he said.

"Oh," said Audrey. "Was that all? Well, I think you might have told me
before."

Phil laughed grudgingly. The situation was abominable, but her utter
childishness palliated it. How was Tudor going to treat the matter? he
wondered. What if he--

A sudden thought flashed across Phil's brain, and his face grew set. Of
course it had been his fault, since she said so. It remained therefore
for him to extricate her, if he could. He turned to her.

"Look here, Mrs. Tudor," he said, in a judicious, elder-brotherly tone,
"I think it's a mistake, don't you know, to let yourself get depressed
over--well, little things. I know what it is to feel down on your luck.
Bu