“But you can’t go to the back door!”

“Apparently I can’t go to the front,” said Lawrence with his wintry smile.  He promised himself to go to the front by and by, but not while Laura was shivering in torn clothes under a bush.

“But what are you going to do?”

“Simply to get us a few necessaries of life.  You can’t be seen like this, and you can’t stand here forever, catching cold with next to nothing on:  besides, you’ve had no food since five o’clock this morning—­and not much then.”

“But the servants—­if they have orders—­”

“Servants!” He laughed.

“But you don’t mean to force your way in?”

“Not past Bernard, dear.  Don’t be afraid:  I shall skulk in by the rear.”

It was easy to say “Don’t be afraid”:  doubly easy for Lawrence, who had never known Bernard’s darker temper.  But there was no coward blood in Mrs. Clowes, and she steadied herself under the rallying influence of Hyde’s firm look and tone.

“Go, then, but don’t be long.  And, Lawrence promise me. . .”

“Anything, dear.”

“You won’t touch Bernard, will you?” Lawrence was dumb, from wonder, not from indecision.  “No one can do that,” said Laura under her breath.  “Oh, I know you wouldn’t dream of it.  But yet—­if he insulted you, if he struck you . . . if he insulted me. . . ?”

“No, on my honour.”

He touched her hand with his lips—­a ceremony performed by Lawrence only once beforehand in what different circumstances!—­ and left her:  more like a winter butterfly than ever, with her shining hair, pale face, and gallant eyes, and the silver threads of her embroidered skirt flowing round her over the sunburnt turf.

Wanhope was an old-fashioned house, and the domestic premises were much the same as they had been in the eighteenth century, except that Clowes had turned one wing of the stables into a garage and rooms for the chauffeur.  He kept no indoor menservants except Barry, the groom and gardener living in the village, while three or four maids were ample to wait on that quiet family.  Pursuing the tradesman’s drive between coach-house, tool shed, coal shed, and miscellaneous outbuildings, Lawrence emerged on a brick yard, ducked under a clothes-line, made for an open doorway, and found himself in the scullery.  It was empty, and he went on into a big old-fashioned kitchen, draughty enough with its high roof and blue plastered walls.  Here, too, there was not a soul to be seen:  a kettle was furiously boiling over on the hob, a gas ring was running to waste near by, turned on but left unlit and volleying evil fumes.  His next researches carried him into a flagged passage, on his right a sunlit pantry, on his left a dingy alcove evidently dedicated to the trimming of lamps and the cleaning of boots.  He began to wonder if every one had run away.  But no:  a sharp turn, a couple of steps, and he came on an inner door, comfortably covered with green baize, through which issued a perfect hubbub of voices all talking at once.  He listened long enough to hear himself characterized by a baritone as a stinking Jew, and by a treble as not her style and a bit too gay but quite the gentleman, before he raised the latch and stepped in.