or yourself. She is coming here to luncheon."

The truth was out at last. Yet Dick was aware that he might very easily
have guessed it. This was just the quixotic line his father could have
been foreseen to take.

"Well, we must just keep our eyes open and see that she doesn't slip
anything into the decanters while our heads are turned," said Dick with a
chuckle. Old Mr. Hazlewood laid a hand upon his son's shoulder.

"That's the sort of thing they say. Only you don't mean it, Richard, and
they do," he remarked with a mild and reproachful shake of the head. "Ah,
some day, my boy, your better nature will awaken."

Dick expressed no anxiety for the quick advent of that day.

"How many are there of us to be at luncheon?" asked Dick.

"Only the two of us."

"I see. We are to keep the danger in the family. Very wise, sir,
upon my word."

"Richard, you pervert my meaning," said Mr. Hazlewood. "The
neighbourhood has not been kind to Mrs. Ballantyne. She has been made to
suffer. The Vicar's wife, for instance--a most uncharitable person. And
my sister, your Aunt Margaret, too, in Great Beeding--she is what you
would call--"

"Hot stuff," murmured Dick.

"Quite so," replied Mr. Hazlewood, and he turned to his son with a look
of keen interest upon his face. "I am not familiar with the phrase,
Richard, but not for the first time I notice that the crude and
inelegant vulgarisms in which you abound and which you no doubt pick up
in the barrack squares compress a great deal of forcible meaning into
very few words."

"That is indeed true, sir," replied Dick with an admirable gravity, "and
if I might be allowed to suggest it, a pamphlet upon that interesting
subject would be less dangerous work than coquetting with the latest
edition of the Marquise de Brinvilliers."

The word pamphlet was a bugle-call to Mr. Hazlewood.

"Ah! Speaking of pamphlets, my boy," he began, and walked over to a desk
which was littered with papers.

"We have not the time, sir," Dick interrupted from the bay of the window.
A woman had come out from the cottage. She unlatched a little gate in her
garden which opened on to the meadow. She crossed it. Yet another gate
gave her entrance to the garden of Little Beeding. In a moment Hubbard
announced:

"Mrs. Ballantyne"; and Stella came into the room and stood near to the
door with a certain constraint in her attitude and a timid watchfulness
in her big eyes. She had the look of a deer. It seemed t