s!" was the desperate
reply. "Undo the harm that you have done already. Your help--oh, I mean
what I say!--may yet preserve Arthur's life. Go to the farm, and save
him."

Sir Giles's anger assumed a new form, it indulged in an elaborate
mockery of respect. He took his watch from his pocket, and consulted it
satirically. "Must I make an excuse?" he asked with a clumsy assumption
of humility.

"No! you must go."

"Permit me to inform you, Miss Henley, that the last train started more
than two hours since."

"What does that matter? You are rich enough to hire a train."

Sir Giles, the actor, could endure it no longer; he dropped the mask,
and revealed Sir Giles, the man. His clerk was summoned by a peremptory
ring of the bell. "Attend Miss Henley to the house," he said. "You may
come to your senses after a night's rest," he continued, turning
sternly to Iris. "I will receive your excuses in the morning."

In the morning, the breakfast was ready as usual at nine o'clock. Sir
Giles found himself alone at the table.

He sent an order to one of the women-servants to knock at Miss Henley's
door. There was a long delay. The housekeeper presented herself in a
state of alarm; she had gone upstairs to make the necessary
investigation in her own person. Miss Henley was not in her room; the
maid was not in her room; the beds had not been slept in; the heavy
luggage was labelled--"To be called for from the hotel." And there was
an end of the evidence which the absent Iris had left behind her.

Inquiries were made at the hotel. The young lady had called there, with
her maid, early on that morning. They had their travelling-bags with
them; and Miss Henley had left directions that the luggage was to be
placed under care of the landlord until her return. To what destination
she had betaken herself nobody knew.

Sir Giles was too angry to remember what she had said to him on the
previous night, or he might have guessed at the motive which had led to
her departure. "Her father has done with her already," he said; "and I
have done with her now." The servants received orders not to admit Miss
Henley, if her audacity contemplated a return to her godfather's house.

VIII

ON the afternoon of the same day, Iris arrived at the village situated
in the near neighbourhood of Arthur Mountjoy's farm.

The infection of political excitement (otherwise the hatred of England)
had spread even to this remote place. On the steps of his lit