“Guilty,” she confessed.  “Now cure me.”

“I could point out the promised land, but how, could I lead you to it?” he answered.

“You don’t like me well enough,” she sighed.

“I like you better than you believe,” he assured her, slackening his speed a little.  “We have met, I suppose, a dozen times in our lives.  I have danced with you here and there, talked nonsense once, I remember, at a musical reception—­”

“I tried to flirt with you then,” she interrupted.

He nodded.

“I was in the midst of a great case,” he said, “and everything that happened to me outside it was swept out of my mind day by day.  What I was going to say is that I have always liked you, from the moment when your mother presented me to you at your first dance.”

“I wish you’d told me so,” she murmured.

“It wouldn’t have made any difference,” he declared.  “I wasn’t in a position to think of a duke’s daughter, in those days.  I don’t suppose I am now.”

“Try,” she begged hopefully.

He smiled back at her.  The reawakening of her sense of humour was something.

“Too late,” he regretted.  “During the last month or so the thing has come to me which we all look forward to, only I don’t think fate has treated me kindly.  I have always loved normal ways and normal people, and the woman I care for is different.”

“Tell me about her?” she insisted.

“You will be very surprised when I tell you her name,” he said.  “It is Margaret Hilditch.”

She looked at him for a moment in blank astonishment.

“Heavens!” she exclaimed.  “Oliver Hilditch’s wife!”

“I can’t help that,” he declared, a little doggedly.  “She’s had a miserable time, I know.  She was married to a scamp.  I’m not quite sure that her father isn’t as bad a one.  Those things don’t make any difference.”

“They wouldn’t with you,” she said softly.  “Tell me, did you say anything to her last night?”

“I did,” he replied.  “I began when we were out alone together.  She gave me no encouragement to speak of, but at any rate she knows.”

Lady Cynthia leaned a little forward in her place.

“Do you know where she is now?”

He was a little startled.

“Down at the cottage, I suppose.  The butler told me that she never rose before midday.”

“Then for once the butler was mistaken,” his companion told him.  “Margaret Hilditch left at six o’clock this morning.  I saw her in travelling clothes get into the car and drive away.”

“She left the cottage this morning before us?” Francis repeated, amazed.

“I can assure you that she did,” Lady Cynthia insisted.  “I never sleep, amongst my other peculiarities,” she went on bitterly, “and I was lying on a couch by the side of the open window when the car came for her.  She stopped it at the bend of the avenue —­so that it shouldn’t wake us up, I suppose.  I saw her get in and drive away.”