Graeme stepped forward. "I'll explain," he said. "Miss Smedley----" "No," interrupted Claire Mayne, "leave this to me. You should have explained before this." She took a few steps in the direction of the other girl. "Miss Smedley," she said in a clear voice, "I think it only right I should tell you I am not married. I am not Mr. Jakes's wife." She paused, apparently from loss of breath. In the middle distance the young man, obviously losing control of his mount, was shouting something over his shoulder. Miss Smedley glanced in his direction and then looked Claire Mayne brutally from head to toe. "Please don't apologise," she said, "I--we suspected as much." It took the short, hard laugh that followed the words to drive the insult home. She flicked her horse sharply on the flank and rode after her escort. The sound of the horses' hoofs had died away before Miss Mayne spoke. "Did she mean--was that woman trying to----?" she began, and stopped. Mechanically she knelt down and began setting out the tea-things as if in a trance. "Why didn't you leave it to me?" expostulated Graeme, kneeling beside her. "I'd have explained properly. She misunderstood ... or pretended to." The girl raised a face from which all vestige of colour had fled. Her eyes were wide and pitiful; she held a sugar basin in one hand, in the other a butter knife. "But I did explain," she said. "How could I know...?" "You should have left it to me," repeated Graeme. He put out his hand and took the sugar basin from her. She laid the butter-knife with precision beside the cabbage leaf containing the butter. Their actions were mechanical and inconsequent, as if the kneeling figures were two automata actuated by wires. "I thought I'd left enough to you," she said. "You laughed it over the first time, as if it were a joke. Perhaps it was a joke. One would rather look at it in that light. But at least you could have made sure there would have been no second misunderstanding. No possibility of my being--being insulted." The colour flamed back into her cheeks. "And you did nothing--nothing." She bit her lower lip to control its trembling. Graeme forced a wan smile. "There wasn't time, then.... But I will do something--and anyhow, it doesn't matter, really." "Doesn't matter!" she echoed in frozen tones. "_Doesn't matter_! You put me in odiously false positions, you expose me to an outrageous insult ... and you--you laugh and say it doesn't matter! Oh, this is intolerable!" Angry tears forced themselves to her eyelashes. Graeme groped for the hand that fumbled for a preposterous handkerchief (with what care had that little scrap of cambric been selected a few short hours before, and with what unconsciousness of the purpose it would serve!) "Claire! Claire! don't you understand, I want you to marry me."