than because either
of us had, I think, the least faith in our explanations.

It was Ronnie who, picking up the thread of our deductions from the Home
Farm interview in the course of our discussion, sought to reconcile us and
our theories.

"She might have meant to go up to the Farm," he suggested, "and changed
her mind when she got outside. Nothing very unlikely in that."

"But why the devil should she have made an appointment at the Home Farm in
the first instance?" Frank replied with some cogency.

"If she ever did," I put in unwisely, thereby provoking a repetition of
the evidence afforded by Miss Banks's behaviour, particularly the damning
fact that she, alone, had responded to Racquet's demand for our instant
annihilation.

And while we went on with our pointless arguments and the other little
group of three continued to lay plans for the re-education of Brenda, the
depression of a deeper and deeper ennui weighed upon us all. The truth is,
I think, that we were all waiting for the possibility of the runaway's
return, listening for the sound of the car, and growing momentarily more
uneasy as no sound came. No doubt the Jervaises were all very sleepy and
peevish, and the necessity of restraining themselves before Turnbull and
myself added still another to their many sources of irritation.

I put the Jervaises apart in this connection, because Ronnie was certainly
very wide awake and I had no inclination whatever to sleep. My one longing
was to get back, alone, into the night. I was fretting with the fear that
the dawn would have broken before I could get away. I had made up my mind
to watch the sunrise from "Jervaise Clump."

It was Mrs. Jervaise who started the break-up of the party. She was
attacked by a craving to yawn that gradually became irresistible. I saw
the incipient symptoms of the attack and watched her with a sympathetic
fascination, as she clenched her jaw, put her hand up to her lips, and
made little impatient movements of her head and body. I knew that it must
come at last, and it did, catching her unawares in the middle of a
sentence--undertaken, I fancy, solely as a defence against the insidious
craving that was obsessing her.

"Oh, dear!" she said, with a mincing, apologetic gesture of her head; and
then "Dear me!" Having committed the solecism, she found it necessary to
draw attention to it. She may have been a Shropshire Norman, but at that
relaxed hour of the night, she displayed all th