He walked on a few steps, leaving her standing, and then came back to her.

More seriously he asked the fateful question:  “I take it I am to be arrested to-morrow?”

He saw by her face that he had guessed truly, and as if speaking to himself, he said musingly:  “That means I have twenty-four hours.”

She forced herself to say:  “They think you have a good sporting chance if you stay where you are.”

“It never occurred to me to go away!” he said angrily.  “I want you always to remember, Blanche, that I told you, here, and now, that, even if appearances may come to seem damnably against me, I am an innocent man.”

She answered:  “I will always remember that, and always say so.”

He said abruptly:  “I want you to do me a kindness.”

She asked uneasily:  “What is it, Lionel?”

“I want you to get Gifford to prevent the meeting which has been arranged for to-morrow morning between Panton and the Home Office expert called Spiller.”

He waited a moment, then went on:  “It was the summons to Panton which put me on the track of—­of this conspiracy.”  And Blanche felt that this time Varick was speaking the truth.

She said, deprecatingly:  “Mark would do a great deal to please me, but I’m afraid he won’t do that.”

“I think he may,” he answered, in a singular tone, “you may have a greater power of persuasion than you know.”

She made no answer to that, knowing well that Mark would never interfere with regard to such a matter as this.

“Can you suggest any reason I can give, why we should be all going away to-day?” she asked falteringly.

Without a moment’s hesitation he answered:  “You can say there has been trouble among the servants, and that I should feel much obliged if I could have the house cleared of all my visitors by to-night.”

Then Blanche Farrow came to a sudden determination.  “I will get them all away to-day, Lionel, but I, myself, will stay till to-morrow morning.”

For the first time during this strange, to her this unutterably painful conversation, Varick showed a touch of real, genuine feeling.  It was as if a mask had fallen from his face.

He gripped her hand.  “You’re a brick!” he exclaimed.  “I ought to tell you to go away, too, but I won’t be proud, Blanche.  I’ll accept your kindness.”

CHAPTER XXIII

There are hours in almost every life of which the memory is put away, hidden, as far as may be, in an unfathomable pit.  Blanche Farrow never recalled to herself, and never discussed with any living being, the hours which followed her talk with Lionel Varick.

Of the five people to whom she told the untrue tale so quickly and so cleverly imagined by their host, only one suspected that she was not telling the truth.  That one—­oddly enough—­was Sir Lyon Dilsford.  He guessed that something was wrong, and in one sense he got near to the truth—­but it was such a very small bit of the truth!