affect the immediate situation? Do you, for instance, expect to find your
sister at home when we get back?"

"I do," assented Jervaise definitely. "I believe that Miss Banks had some
good reason for being so sure that we should find her there."

I am not really pig-headed. I may not give way gracefully to such an
opponent as Jervaise, but I do not stupidly persist in a personal opinion
through sheer obstinacy. And up to Jervaise's last statement, his general
deductions were, I admitted to myself, not only within the bounds of
probability but, also, within distance of affording a tolerable
explanation of Anne's diplomacy during our interview. But--and I secretly
congratulated myself on having exercised a subtler intuition in this one
particular, at least--I did not believe that Anne expected us to find
Brenda at the Hall on our return. I remembered that anxious pucker of the
brow and the pathetic insistence on the belief--or might it not better be
described as a hope?--that Brenda had done nothing final.

"You haven't made a bad case," I conceded; "but I differ as to your last
inference."

"You don't think we shall find Brenda at home?"

"I do not," I replied aggressively.

I expected him to bear me down under a new weight of argument founded on
the psychology of Anyone, and I was startled when he suddenly dropped the
lawyer and let out a whole-hearted "Damnation," that had a ring of fine
sincerity.

I changed my tone instantly in response to that agreeably human note.

"I may be quite mistaken, of course," I said. "I hope to goodness I am. By
the way, do you know if she has taken any luggage with her?"

"Can't be sure," Jervaise said. "Olive's been looking and there doesn't
seem to be anything missing, but we've no idea what things she brought
down from town with her. If she'd been making plans beforehand..."

We came out of the wood at that point in our discussion, and almost at the
same moment the last barrier of cloud slipped away from before the moon.
She was in her second quarter, and seemed to be indolently rolling down
towards the horizon, the whole pose of the scene giving her the effect of
being half-recumbent.

I turned and looked at Jervaise and found him facing me with the full
light of the moon on his face. He was frowning, not with the domineering
scowl of the cross-examining counsel, but with a perplexed, inquiring
frown that revealed all the boy in him.

Once at Oakstone he had got into a se