“What are you two whispering about?” demanded Freddie Ulstervelt noisily, patience coming to an end.

“Wha—­what the devil is that to—­” began Brock furiously.  Constance brought him up sharp with a warning kick on the ankle.  He vowed afterward that he would carry the mark to his grave.

“He’s telling me what a nice chap you are, Freddie,” said she sweetly.  Brock glared out of the window.  Freddie sniffed scornfully.

“I’m getting sick of this job,” growled Brock under his breath.  “I didn’t calculate on—­”

“Now, Roxbury dear, don’t be a bear,” she pleaded so gently, her eyes so full of appeal, that he flushed with sudden shame and contrition.

“Forgive me,” he said, the old light coming back into his eyes so strongly that she quivered for an instant before lowering her own.  “I hate that confounded puppy,” he explained lamely, guarding his voice with a new care.  “If you felt as I do, you would too.”

She laughed in the old way, but she was not soon to forget that moment when panic was so imminent.

“I—­I don’t see how anyone can help liking Freddie,” she said, without actually knowing why.  He stared hard at the Danube below.  After a long silence he said,—­

“It’s all tommy-rot about it being blue, isn’t it?”

She was also looking at the dark brown, swollen river that has been immortalised in song.

“It’s never blue.  It’s always a yellow-ochre, it seems to me.”

He waited a long time before venturing to express the thought that of late had been troubling him seriously.

“I wonder if you truly realise the difficulty Edith will have in satisfying an incredulous world with her absolutely truthful story.  She’ll have to explain, you know.  There’s bound to be a sceptic or two, my dear Constance.”

“But there’s Roxbury,” she protested, her face clouding nevertheless. “He will set everything right.”

“The world will say he is a gullible fool,” said he gently.  “And the world always laughs at, not with, a fool.  Alas, my dear sister, it’s a very deep pool we’re in.”  He leaned closer and allowed a quaint, half-bantering, wholly diffident smile to cross his face.  “I—­I’m afraid that you are the only being on earth who can make the story thoroughly plausible.”

“I?” she demanded quickly.  Their eyes met, and the wonder suddenly left hers.  She blushed furiously.  “Nonsense!” she said, and abruptly left him to take a seat beside Katherine Rodney.  He found small comfort in the whisperings and titterings that came, willy-nilly, to his burning ears from the corner of the compartment.  He had a disquieting impression that they were discussing him; it was forced in upon him that being a brother-in-law is not an enviable occupation.

“Wot?” he asked, almost fiercely, after the insistent Freddie had thrice repeated a question.

“I say, will you have a cigaret?” half shouted Freddie, exasperated.