"Why don't you take me as bodyguard and call on them?" "No excuse." "Go and ask 'em for a Red Cross subscription. It's about the only house in the neighborhood you haven't been to." "D'you mean it?" Isobel asked eagerly. "Of course I do. I'm as curious as anybody." "Righto, then I will. To-morrow morning. Don't say a word to any one, or dad may object. Meet me at the garage at eleven, and we'll sneak out. You'll have to look after me like anything. Bring a card-case in one hand and a revolver in the other; then we'll be ready for anything. Hallo, dad--your visitors didn't keep you long. What did they want?" Sir Edward came out on to the terrace and dropped into a chair. "Mad!" he said meditatively. "Quite mad, so far as I can see." "Who?" "Both of 'em." "But what did they want?" "That's just it. I don't know. They kept on saying that they wanted to tell me something I ought to know, but not a thing more would they say." He walked irritably up and down the terrace. Allen and Isobel looked at each other. "In the end," said Sir Edward, "I lost my temper. I practically kicked 'em out, and I've no idea now why they came. I'll go and see Davies to-morrow, to see if he's recovered his sanity." He paused in his pacing and faced them. "By the way," he continued, "Malcolm tells me that he hears in the village that Denmore is full of black men, and done up like a scene from 'Chu Chin Chow'--what's the matter?" Both Allen and Isobel had had a sudden fit of helpless laughter. "_What_ a set of gossips we all are--go on, dad." "All I was going to say," pointed out her father huffily, "is that these people are obviously from the East, and if so I shall be glad to cultivate their acquaintance. You know how interested I am in the East. Gossip, indeed!" He shot into the house, still in a very ruffled condition. Isobel glanced at her watch. "Heavens," she said, "I must fly. I've a crow to pick with the War Office over the telephone before dinner. Don't forget--eleven to-morrow, and don't tell anybody." Allen decided that he was not likely to tell any one. The mere feeling that he and Isobel shared a secret was too precious for that. Every day he fell more deeply in love with her, and every day he felt more sure that the spoilt beauty of the illustrated papers had never existed save in the perverted imaginations of unkind people. On the surface, he and she had slipped easily into the old intimacy they had enjoyed once before, when Isobel was a small girl, but every now and then some chance word or look had awakened a hope in Allen that some deeper bond was being or had been formed between them.