“What made you come up here, now?” he asked with that glowering legal air of his; thrusting the question at me as if I must, now, be finally confuted.

“After you ran away from me in the avenue,” I said promptly, “it seemed that the only thing left for me to do was to walk to Hurley Junction; but a quarter of a mile from the Park gate I found your car drawn up by the side of the road.  And as I had no sort of inclination to walk fourteen miles on a broiling afternoon, I decided to wait by the car until some one came to fetch it.  And when presently Banks came, I tried my best to persuade him to take me to the station in it.  He refused on the grounds that he wanted to take the car back at once to the garage; but when I explained my difficulty to him, his hospitable mind prompted him to offer me temporary refuge at the Home Farm.  He brought me back to introduce me, and we found you here.  Simple, isn’t it?”

Jervaise scowled at the hearth-rug.  “All been a cursed misunderstanding from first to last,” he growled.

“But what was that about Grace Tattersall?” Brenda asked.  “If you’d accused her of spying, I could have understood it.  She was trying to pump me for all she was worth yesterday afternoon.”

“I’ve admitted that there must have been some misunderstanding,” Jervaise said.  “For goodness’ sake, let’s drop this question of Melhuish’s interference and settle the more important one of what we’re going to do about—­you.”

“I resent that word ‘interference,’” I put in.

“Oh! resent it, then,” Jervaise snarled.

“Really, I think Mr. Melhuish is perfectly justified,” Brenda said.  “I feel horribly ashamed of the way you’ve been treating him at home.  I should never have thought that the mater...”

“Can’t you understand that she’s nearly off her head with worrying about you?” Jervaise interrupted.

“No, I can’t,” Brenda returned.  “If it had been Olive, I could.  But I should have thought they would all have been jolly glad to see the last of me.  They’ve always given me that impression, anyhow.”

“Not in this way,” her brother grumbled.

“What do you mean by that exactly?” Anne asked with a great seriousness.

I think Jervaise was beginning to lose his nerve.  He was balanced so dangerously between the anxiety to maintain the respectability of the Jervaises and his passion, or whatever it was, for Anne.  Such, at least, was my inference; although how he could possibly reconcile his two devotions I could not imagine, unless his intentions with regard to Anne were frankly shameful.  And Jervaise must, indeed, be an even grosser fool than I supposed him to be if he could believe for one instant that Anne was the sort of woman who would stoop to a common intrigue with him.  For it could be nothing more than that.  If they loved each other, they could do no less than follow the shining example of Brenda and Anne’s brother.