all his tact and delicacy, to hide his knowledge of it from
Philippa. He tried to make himself forget it, lest by a word or a
look she should gather that he knew. He did not want to see her
disconcerted.

The short cut to Amberley from the station leads through a side gate
into the turning at the bottom of the east walk. Straker, as he
rounded the turning, saw Miss Tarrant not five yards off, coming
down the walk.

He was not ready for her, and his first instinct, if he could have
yielded to it, would have been to fly. That was his delicacy.

He met her with a remark on the beauty of the morning. That was his
tact.

He tried to look as if he hadn't been to see Furnival off at the
station, as if the beauty of the morning sufficiently accounted for
his appearance at that early hour. The hour, indeed, was so
disgustingly early that he would have half an hour to put through
with Philippa before breakfast.

But Miss Tarrant ignored the beauty of the morning.

"What have you done," she said, "with Mr. Furnival?"

It was Straker who was disconcerted now.

"What have I done with him?"

"Yes. Where is he?"

Straker's tact was at a disadvantage, but his delicacy instantly
suggested that if Miss Tarrant was not disconcerted it was because
she didn't know he knew. That made it all right.

"He's in the seven-fifty train."

A light leaped in her eyes; the light of defiance and pursuit, the
light of the hunter's lust frustrated and of the hunter's ire.

"You must get him back again," she said.

"I can't," said Straker. "He's gone on business." (He still used
tact with her.) "He had to go."

"He hadn't," said she. "That's all rubbish."

Her tone trod his scruples down and trampled on them, and Straker
felt that tact and delicacy required of him no more. She had given
herself away at last; she had let herself in for the whole calamity
of his knowledge, and he didn't know how she proposed to get out of
it this time. And he wasn't going to help her. Not he!

They faced each other as they stood there in the narrow walk, and
his knowledge challenged her dumbly for a moment. Then he spoke.

"Look here, what do you want him for? Why can't you let the poor
chap alone?"

"What do you suppose I want him for?"

"I've no business to suppose anything. I don't know. But I'm not
going to get him back for you."

Something flitted across her face and shifted the wide gaze of her
eyes. Straker went on without remorse.

"