She hesitated.

“I think it quite unnecessary,” she answered.  “I have certain reasons, not perhaps very serious ones, but still worth consideration, for not publishing it abroad who my companion was.  It must be sufficient for you that he was one of my fellow-guests at Maddenham Priory, and a friend for whom I can vouch.”

The servant was at the door.  Mr. Grey bowed.

“As your ladyship wishes, of course,” he said.

* * * * *

Emily de Reuss made no immediate movement to rejoin her guest.  She was a woman of nerve and courage, but this had rather taken her breath away.  She had had no time for thought.  She had answered as though by instinct.  It was only now that she realised what she had done.  She had lied deliberately, had placed herself, should the truth ever be known, in an utterly false if not a dangerous position, for the sake of a boy of whose antecedents she knew nothing, and on whom rested, at any rate, the shadow of a very ugly suspicion.  She had done this, who frankly owned to an absorbing selfishness, whose conduct of life ever gravitated from the centre of self.  After all, what folly!  She had been generous upon impulse.  How ridiculous!

She walked slowly out to where Douglas sat waiting.  She came upon him like a ghost in the dim light, and when the soft rustling of her gown announced her presence, he started violently, and turned a bloodless face with twitching lips and eager eyes to hers.  The sight of it was a shock to her.  He had been living in fear, then—­her falsehoods for his sake had been necessary.

“Has he gone?” he asked incoherently.

“Yes.”

“Was it—­about me?”

“Yes.”

“You’d better tell me,” he begged.

She sat down by his side and glanced around.  They were alone and out of earshot from the windows.

“My visitor,” she said, “was a detective—­from Scotland Yard.  He came to know if I could give him any information about my fellow—­passenger from Accreton on February 10th.”

“Why?  Why did he want to know?”

“There was a murder, he said—­a Cumberland farmer, and a young man named Douglas Guest was missing.”

“Douglas Guest” he said, hoarsely, “was in that train.  He was killed.  It was in the papers.”

“So the detective believed,” she said, “but a daughter of the murdered man—­”

“Ah!”

“—­Has taken up the case and positively refused to identify some of the clothing belonging to the dead man.  There was some talk of a young man, who answered to the description of Douglas Guest, having forced himself into my carriage.  The man came to ask me about this.”

“And you told him—­what?”

She adjusted a bracelet carefully, her beautiful eyes fixed upon his haggard face.

“I told him a lie,” she answered.  “I told him that my companion was a fellow-guest at the house where I had been staying.”