Commodore Graham looked annoyed.

“What a nuisance!  I am afraid that I must see him, Mr. Hillyard.”

“Of course,” said Hillyard.  “Admirals are admirals.”

“And they know it!” said Commodore Graham with a sigh.

Hillyard rose and took his hat.

“Well, I am very grateful to you, Mr. Hillyard,” said Graham.  “I can’t say anything more to you now.  Things, as you know, are altogether very doubtful.  We may slip over into smooth water.  On the other hand,” and he twiddled his thumbs serenely, “we may be at war in a month.  If that were to be the case, I might want to talk with you again.  Will you leave your address with Miss Chayne?”

Hillyard was led out by another door, no doubt so that he might not meet the impatient admiral.  He might have gone away disheartened from that interview with its vague promises.  But there are other and often surer indications than words.  When Miss Chayne took down his address, her manner had quite changed towards him.  She had now a frank and pleasant comradeship.  The official had gone.  Her smile said as plainly as print could do:  “You are with us now.”

Meanwhile Commodore Graham read through once more the letter of Paul Bendish.  He turned from that to a cabled report from Khartum of the opinion which various governors of districts had formed concerning the ways and the discretion of Martin Hillyard.  Then once more he rang his bell.

“There was a list of suitable private yachts to be made out,” he said.

“It is ready,” replied Miss Chayne, and she brought it to him.

Over that list Commodore Graham spent a great deal of time.  In the end his finger rested on the name of the steam-yacht Dragonfly, owned by Sir Charles Hardiman, Baronet.

CHAPTER IX

ENTER THE HEROINE IN ANYTHING BUT WHITE SATIN

Goodwood in the year nineteen hundred and fourteen!  There were some, throwers of stones, searchers after a new thing on which to build a reputation, who have been preaching these many years past that the temper of England had changed, its solidity all dissolved into froth, and that a new race of neurotics was born on Mafeking night.  Just ninety-nine years before this Goodwood meeting, when Napoleon and the veterans of the Imperial Guard were knocking at the gates of Brussels, a famous ball was given.  Goodwood of the year nineteen-fourteen, mutatis mutandis, did but repeat that scene, the same phlegmatic enjoyment of the festival, the same light-heartedness and sure confidence under the great shadow, and the same ending.

The whispered word went round so that there should be no panic or alarm, and of a sudden every officer was gone.  Goodwood of nineteen fourteen and a July so perfect with sunlight and summer that it seemed some bird at last must break the silence of the famed beech-grove!  All the world went to it.  The motor-cars and the coaches streamed up over Duncton Hill and wound down the Midhurst Road to pleasant Charlton, with its cottages and gardens of flowers.  Martin Hillyard went too.