“Callers, I suppose,” Morriston observed with a half-yawn.  “What is it, Stent?”

“Could I speak to you, sir?” the man said, stopping short a little distance away.

Morriston went forward to him, and after they had spoken together he turned round, and with an “Excuse me for a few minutes,” went off towards the house with the butler.

So at last the opportunity had come.  Gifford glanced at his companion and noticed that her face had gone a shade paler than before the interruption.

“I wonder what can be the matter,” she observed, a little anxiously Gifford thought.  Then she laughed.  “I dare say it is nothing; Stent is becoming absurdly fussy; and all the alarms and discoveries we have had lately have not diminished the tendency.”

“The latest discovery must have come rather as a relief,” Gifford ventured tentatively.

“The marks on my dress you mean?” She laughed.  “So far that I now share with Muriel Tredworth the suspicion of knowing all about the tragedy.”

“Hardly that,” Gifford replied with a smile.  “There can be no cause for that fear.  By the way,” he added more seriously, “I owe you an account of my failure to gain any information for you with regard to Mr. Gervase Henshaw’s plans.”

“He is not communicative?” Miss Morriston suggested casually.

Gifford shook his head.  “No, I am never able to get hold of him.  In fact, it seems as though he rather makes a point of avoiding us.  And if we do meet, he is vagueness and reticence personified.”

They were walking slowly back along the shrubbery path.  The girl turned to him for an instant, her expression softened in a look of gratitude.  “It is very kind of you, Mr. Gifford, to take all this trouble for us.  And I am sure it is not your fault that the result is not what you might wish.  It was rather absurd of me to set you the task.  But I am none the less grateful.  Please think that, and do not bother about it any more.”

“But if the man is likely to annoy you,” he urged.  “Have you longer any reason to fear him?”

She turned swiftly.  “Fear him?  What do you mean?”

“We thought he might be unscrupulous and might make himself objectionable.”

She shrugged.  “I dare say it is possible.”

“I must confess,” he pursued, “I can’t quite make the fellow out.  Nor his motive for remaining in the place.  Your brother told me he came across him hanging about in one of your plantations.”

He thought the blood left her face for an instant, but otherwise she showed no sign of discomposure.

“How did he account for his being there?” she asked calmly.

“Unsatisfactorily enough.  I forget his actual excuse.”

“Was that all?” she demanded coldly.

“I believe so.  But it is hardly desirable, as your brother said, to have the man prowling about the property.”

For a moment she was silent.  “No,” she said as though by an afterthought.