THE lady of Eastmead fronted her neighbour with a certain grimness. “ She has seen him they’ve patched it up.”

Breathless with curiosity, Tony yet made but a bite of her news. “ It’s on again it’s all right? ”

“It’s whatever you like to call it. I only know what Paul tells me.”

Paul, at this, stopped in his slow retreat, wheeling about. “ I only know what I had just now from Jean.”

Tony’s expression, in the presence of his young friend’s, dropped almost comically into the con siderate. “Oh, but I daresay it’s so, old man. I was there when they met,” he explained to Mrs. Beever, “ and I saw for myself pretty well how it would go.”

“I confess I didn’t,” she replied. Then she added: “It must have gone with a jump! ”

“With a jump, precisely and the jump was hers!” laughed Tony. “ All’s well that ends well! ” He was heated he wiped his excited brow, and Mrs. Beever looked at him as if it struck her that she had helped him to more emotion than she wished him. “ She’s a most extraordinary girl,” he went on

“and the effort she made there, all unprepared for it” he nodded at the very spot of the exploit “was magnificent in its way, one of the finest things I’ve ever seen.” His appreciation of the results of this effort seemed almost feverish, and his elation deepened so that he turned, rather blindly, to poor Paul. “ Upon my honour she’s cleverer, she has more domestic resources, as one may say, than I don’t care whom! ”

“Oh, we all know how clever she is!” Mrs. Beever impatiently grunted.

Tony’s enthusiasm, none the less, overflowed; he was nervous for joy. “ I thought I did myself, but she had a lot more to show me!” He addressed himself again to Paul. “ She told you with her coolness? ”

Paul was occupied with another cigarette; he emitted no sound, and his mother, with a glance at him, spoke for him. “ Didn’t you hear him say it was Jean who told him? ”

“Oh, Jean!”Tony looked graver. “ She told Jean?” But his gaiety, at this image, quickly came back. “ That was charming of her I ”

Mrs. Beever remained cold. “ Why on earth was it charming? ”

Tony, though he reddened, was pulled up but an instant his spirits carried him on. “ Oh, because there hasn’t been much between them, and it was a pretty mark of confidence.” He glanced at his watch. “ They’re in the house? ”

“Not in mine in yours.”

Tony looked surprised. “ Rose and Vidal? ”

Paul spoke at last. “ Jean also went over went after them.”

Tony thought a moment. “ ‘ After them ’ Jean? How long ago? ”

“About a quarter of an hour,” said Paul.

Tony continued to wonder. “ Aren’t you mis taken? They’re not there now.”

“How do you know,” asked Mrs. Beever, “if you’ve not been home? ”

“I have been home I was there five minutes ago.”

“Then how did you get here? ”

“By the long way? I took a fly. I went back to get a paper I had stupidly forgotten and that I needed for a fellow with whom I had to talk. Our talk was a bore for the want of it, so I drove over there and got it, and, as he had his train to catch, I then overtook him at the station. I ran it close, but I saw him off; and here I am.” Tony shook his head. “ There’s no one at Bounds.”

Mrs. Beever looked at Paul. “Then where’s Effie? ”

“Effie’s not here?” Tony asked.

“Miss Armiger took her home,” said Paul.

“You saw them go? ”

“No, but Jean told me.”

“Then where’s Miss Armiger?” Tony continued. “And where’s Jean herself? ”

“Where’s Effie herself that’s the question,” said Mrs. Beever.

“No,” Tony laughed, “ the question’s Where’s

Vidal? He’s the fellow I want to catch. I asked him to stay with me, and he said he’d go over, and it was my finding just now he hadn’t come over that made me drive on here from the station to pick him up.”

Mrs. Beever gave ear to this statement, but she gave nothing else. “ Mr. Vidal can take care of himself; but if Effie’s not at home, where is she?” She pressed her son. “ Are you sure of what Jean said to you? ”

Paul bethought himself. “ Perfectly, mamma. She said Miss Armiger carried off the little girl.”

Tony appeared struck with this. “ That’s exactly what Rose told me she meant to do. Then they’re simply in the garden they simply hadn’t come in.”

“They’ve been in gardens enough!” Mrs. Beever declared. “ I should like to know the child’s simply in bed.”

“So should I,” said Tony with an irritation that was just perceptible; “ but I none the less deprecate the time-honoured custom of a flurry I may say indeed of a panic whenever she’s for a moment out of sight.” He spoke almost as if Mrs. Beever were trying to spoil for him by the note of anxiety the pleasantness of the news about Rose. The next moment, however, he questioned Paul with an evident return of the sense that toward a young man to whom such a hope was lost it was a time for special tact. “You, at any rate, dear boy, .saw Jean go? ”

“Oh, yes I saw Jean go.”

“And you understood from her that Rose and Effie went with Vidal? ”

Paul consulted his memory. “ I think Mr. Vidal went first.”

Tony thought a moment. “ Thanks so much, old chap.” Then with an exaggerated gaiety that might have struck his companions had it not been the sign of so much of his conversation: “ They’re all a jolly party in the garden together. I’ll go over.”

Mrs. Beever had been watching the bridge. “ Here comes Rose she’ll tell us.”

Tony looked, but their friend had already dropped on the hither side, and he turned to Paul. “ You wouldn’t object a to dining? ”

“To meet Mr. Vidal?” Mrs. Beever interposed. “Poor Paul,” she laughed, “ you’re between two fires! You and your guest,” she said to her neighbour, “ had better dine here.”

“Both fires at once?” Tony smiled at her son. “Should you like that better? ”

Paul, where he stood, was lost in the act of watching for Rose. He shook his head absently. “I don’t care a rap!” Then he turned away again, and his mother, addressing Tony, dropped her voice.

“He won’t show.”

“Do you mean his feelings? ”

“I mean for either of us.”

Tony observed him a moment. “ Poor lad, I’ll bring him round!” After which, “ Do you mind if I speak to her of it?” he abruptly inquired.

“To Rose of this news?” Mrs. Beever looked at him hard, and it led her to reply with severity: “Tony Bream, I don’t know what to make of you! ” She was apparently on the point of making some thing rather bad, but she now saw Rose at the bottom of the slope and straightway hailed her. “ You took Effie home? ”

Rose came quickly up. “ Not I! She isn’t here? ”

“She’s gone,” said Mrs. Beever, “Where is she? ”

“I’m afraid I don’t know. I gave her up.” Paul had wheeled round at her first negation; Tony had not moved. Bright and handsome, but a little out of breath, she looked from one of her friends to the other. “ You’re sure she’s not here?” Her sur prise was fine.

Mrs. Beever’s, however, had greater freedom. “How can she be, when Jean says you took her away? ”

Rose Armiger stared; she threw back her head. “ ‘Jean says’?” She looked round her. “Where is ‘Jean ’? ”

“She’s nowhere about she’s not in the house.” Mrs. Beever challenged the two men, echoing the question as if it were indeed pertinent. “ Where is the girl? ”

“She has gone to Bounds,” said Tony. “ She’s not in my garden? ”

“She wasn’t five minutes ago I’ve just come out of it.”

“Then what took you there?” asked Mrs. Beever.

“Mr. Vidal.” Rose smiled at Tony: “ You know what!” She turned again to Mrs. Beever, looking her full in the face. “ I’ve seen him. I went over with him.”

“Leaving Effie with Jean precisely,” said Tony, in his arranging way.

“She came out she begged so hard,” Rose explained to Mrs. Beever. “ So I gave in.”

“And yet Jean says the contrary?” this lady demanded in stupefaction of her son.

Rose turned, incredulous, to Paul. “ She said to you anything so false? ”

“My dear boy, you simply didn’t understand! ” Tony laughed. “ Give me a cigarette.”

Paul’s eyes, contracted to the pin-points we have already seen them become in his moments of emotion, had been attached, while he smoked still harder, to Rose’s face. He turned very red and, before answering her, held out his cigarette-case. “ That was what I remember she said that you had gone with Effie to Bounds.”

Rose stood wonderstruck. “ When she had taken her from me herself? ”

Mrs. Beever referred her to Paul. “ But she wasn’t with Jean when he saw her! ”

Rose appealed to him. “ You saw Miss Martle alone? ”

“Oh yes, quite alone.” Paul now was crimson and without visible sight.

“My dear boy,” cried Tony, impatient, “you simply don’ I remember.”

“Yes, Tony. I remember.”

Rose had turned grave she gave Paul a sombre stare. “ Then what on earth had she done with her? ”

“What she had done was evident: she had taken her home!” Tony declared with an air of incipient disgust. They made a silly mystery of nothing.

Rose gave him a quick, strained smile. “ But if the child’s not there? ”

“You just told us yourself she isn’t!” Mrs. Beever reminded him.

He hunched his shoulders as if there might be many explanations. “ Then she’s somewhere else. She’s wherever Jean took her.”

“But if Jean was here without her? ”

“Then Jean, my dear lady, had come back.”

“Come back to lie?” asked Mrs. Beever.

Tony coloured at this, but he controlled himself. “Dearest Mrs. Beever, Jean doesn’t lie.”

“Then somebody does!” Mrs. Beever roundly brought out.

“It’s not you, Mr. Paul, I know!” Rose declared, discomposed but still smiling. “Was it you who saw her go over? ”

“Yes; she left me here.”

“How long ago? ”

Paul looked as if fifty persons had been watching him. “ Oh, not long! ”

Rose addressed herself to the trio. “ Then why on earth haven’t I met her? She must explain her astounding statement! ”

&ldqu............