About the time when the door of the stone grotto in the grounds of The Hut swung to on Enid Mallory, Mr. Travers Nugent's motor car was rushing up the avenue at the Manor House two miles away. At the main entrance of the mansion Nugent got down and rang the bell, and while waiting turned and spoke to his chauffeur. "I shall want you to be busy this evening, Dixon," he said. "When we get home see that your tanks are full, and have the car ready for any emergency. I may want you at any moment." The smart young fellow touched his cap, and the butler flinging open the door put an end to further possible instructions. Nugent, who was aware that the great manufacturer had gone to London that morning to attend a board meeting, blandly inquired if Mr. Maynard was in. On receiving the expected reply that the master would not be back till next day, he affected to consider deeply, caressing his long moustache. "That is annoying," he said at last. "I wished to see him very particularly. Are the ladies at home?" "Miss Dymmock is in the drawing-room, sir; but Miss Maynard is either in the park or in the gardens--probably in the rosery, which is her favourite place," said the butler. "Ah!" murmured Nugent, and again he seemed to be plunged into perplexity by Mr. Maynard's absence. "I had better see Miss Dymmock, perhaps. No, on second thoughts I won't trouble her. I will leave a message with Miss Maynard, if you will be good enough to show me where I shall be likely to find her." So did this past-master in the art of chicane take elaborate pains to have it understood at the Manor that Violet was the last person whom he had originally set out to see. The butler called a footman to pilot the visitor to the embowered pleasaunce where four days earlier Leslie Chermside's declaration of love had been wrung from his headstrong tongue. With an unread book at her side, Violet was sitting on the same seat where her brief wooing had begun and ended. Nugent's eyes gleamed with momentary satisfaction as he noted the sadness in the beautiful face, the listless droop in the attitude of the graceful figure. But by the time he reached her and bent over the proffered hand his manner was that of the courtly gentleman, tinged with a trace of grave concern which yielded to a semblance of uncontrolled agitation as soon as the footman had retired. His pose and facial expression was that of the bearer of ill tidings to the life. Violet, strung to a pitch of nervous tension by her lover's strange demeanour in the orangery the preceding night, read in Nugent's countenance the exact emotion he intended to show. "This is not a duty call, Mr. Nugent?" she said, as she motioned him to a seat at her side. Nugent preferred to stand, looking down at her. He wanted to mark the effect of every word he had to say.