your service if you ever want his assistance.  Perhaps I ought just to mention that Lord Roxmouth overheard our conversation in the picture-gallery that night of the dinner-party.  He was very rude about it.  I tell you this in case you should see him, but I do not think you will.  Good-bye!  Try to forget that I smoked that cigarette!—­Your sincere friend,”
          
                                     “Maryllia Vancourt.”

As he perused these lines, Walden alternately grew hot and cold—­red and pale.  All was clear to him now!-it was Lord Roxmouth who had played the spy and eavesdropper!  He recalled every little detail of the scene in the picture-gallery and at once realised how much a treacherous as well as jealous and vindictive man could make of it.  Maryllia’s hand laid so coaxingly on his arm,—­Maryllia’s face so sweetly and pleadingly upturned,—­Maryllia’s half-tender tremulous voice with its ’Will you forgive me?’—­and then—­his own impetuous words!—­the way he had caught her hand and kissed it!—­why his very look must have betrayed him to the ‘noble and honourable’ detective, part of whose distinguished role it was to listen at doors and afterwards relate to an inquisitive and scandal-loving society all that he heard within.  By degrees he grasped the whole situation.  He realised that his name and honour lay at the mercy of this man Roxmouth, who under the circumstances of the constant check put upon his mercenary aims, would certainly spare no pains to injure both.  And he felt sick at heart.

Locking Maryllia’s note carefully in his desk, he stepped into his garden and walked up and down the lawn slowly with bent head, Nebbie trotting after him with a sympathetically disconsolate air.  And gradually it dawned upon him that Maryllia had possibly—­nay very probably—­gone away for his sake,—­to make things easier for him—­to remove her presence altogether from his vicinity-and so render Roxmouth’s tale-bearing, with its consequent malicious gossip, futile, till of itself it died away and was forgotten.  As this idea crossed his mind and deepened into conviction, his eyes filled with a sudden smarting moisture.

“Poor child!” he said, half aloud—­“Poor little lonely child!”

Then a fresh thought came to him,—­one which made the blood run more quickly through his veins and caused his heart to pulsate with quite a foolish joy.  If—­if she had indeed gone away out of a sweet womanly wish to save him from what she imagined might cause him embarrassment or perplexity, then—­then surely she cared!  Yes—­she must care for him greatly as a friend,—­though only as a friend—­to be willing to sacrifice the pleasure of passing all the summer in the old home to which she had so lately returned, merely to relieve him of any difficulty her near society might involve.  If she cared!  Was such a thing—­could such a thing be possible?  Tormented by many mingled feelings of tenderness, regret and pain, John pondered his own heart’s problem anxiously, and tried to decide the best course to pursue,—­the best for her—­the best for himself.  He was not long in coming to a decision, and once resolved, he was more at ease.