Maud’s reply was the last which George or any man would have expected.  There was a moment’s silence, and then she burst into a peal of laughter.  It was the laughter of over-strained nerves, but to George’s ears it had the ring of genuine amusement.

“I’m glad you find my story entertaining,” he said dryly.  He was convinced now that he loathed this girl, and that all he desired was to see her go out of his life for ever.  “Later, no doubt, the funny side of it will hit me.  Just at present my sense of humour is rather dormant.”

Maud gave a little cry.

“I’m sorry!  I’m so sorry, Mr. Bevan.  It wasn’t that.  It wasn’t that at all.  Oh, I am so sorry.  I don’t know why I laughed.  It certainly wasn’t because I thought it funny.  It’s tragic.  There’s been a dreadful mistake!”

“I noticed that,” said George bitterly.  The darkness began to afflict his nerves.  “I wish to God we had some light.”

The glare of a pocket-torch smote upon him.

“I brought it to see my way back with,” said Maud in a curious, small voice.  “It’s very dark across the fields.  I didn’t light it before, because I was afraid somebody might see.”

She came towards him, holding the torch over her head.  The beam showed her face, troubled and sympathetic, and at the sight all George’s resentment left him.  There were mysteries here beyond his unravelling, but of one thing he was certain:  this girl was not to blame.  She was a thoroughbred, as straight as a wand.  She was pure gold.

“I came here to tell you everything,” she said.  She placed the torch on the wagon-wheel so that its ray fell in a pool of light on the ground between them.  “I’ll do it now.  Only—­only it isn’t so easy now.  Mr. Bevan, there’s a man—­there’s a man that father and Reggie Byng mistook—­they thought . . .  You see, they knew it was you that I was with that day in the cab, and so they naturally thought, when you came down here, that you were the man I had gone to meet that day—­the man I—­I—­”

“The man you love.”

“Yes,” said Maud in a small voice; and there was silence again.

George could feel nothing but sympathy.  It mastered other emotion in him, even the grey despair that had come her words.  He could feel all that she was feeling.

“Tell me all about it,” he said.

“I met him in Wales last year.”  Maud’s voice was a whisper.  “The family found out, and I was hurried back here, and have been here ever since.  That day when I met you I had managed to slip away from home.  I had found out that he was in London, and I was going to meet him.  Then I saw Percy, and got into your cab.  It’s all been a horrible mistake.  I’m sorry.”

“I see,” said George thoughtfully.  “I see.”

His heart ached like a living wound.  She had told so little, and he could guess so much.  This unknown man who had triumphed seemed to sneer scornfully at him from the shadows.