"I know, I 'm going, I am really, Jack. It's purely for your own good I am speaking; why should it matter to me? But you're such an unsuspecting chap, and I don't want to see you made a fool of; and look here, Jack, I'm a brute to suggest it, I know, but women are fickle, as all the world knows, and she thought you were dead, and after all no one could blame her if--don't you see?" There was a sudden pause then, and a loosening of the strong grip on his arm, and the musician began to feel something of the brute he had been so ready to avow himself. "Of course, I'm not insinuating that there's some one else, I don't know his name if there is; but knowing their nature as I do, I think it's wiser not to--not to give them a clean bill of constancy always--eh? At all events, how would it be for me to meet you at the flat when I've sounded the ground a bit with Joan? It would only make a delay of half-an-hour or so, and--my dear fellow!" Jack had caught him by the coat in a sudden paroxysm of nervous fury, and Digby found himself half throttled and pinned against the stone wall of the portico, while a loud peal from the door-bell resounded through the house. "You brute--you! Why do you want to keep me from her? If you were any one else standing between her and me I would wipe the floor with you. There--clear out, can't you? Oh, hang it, I've been half crazed to meet her all day, and now--that devilish suggestion of yours--ah! can't you go, you?" Digby shrank back as he felt himself free. There were steps coming along the hall inside, and he curbed himself to speak carelessly as he turned away as if to leave. "Poor chap, I forgive you when I think of the hash you are going to make of it. You weren't born to deal with wily women, and when to-morrow comes, ah!--" After all, when the man opened the door, it was Digby who entered the house. A man with a short beard was walking rapidly down the street. "What is it? Anything wrong?" asked Lady Joan, quickly. "No, no, nothing. Only I feel as though I had been persuading you against your will and for my own selfish reasons, and I came back to say so. There is nothing to keep you in England--nothing. Why not go abroad--to-morrow?" "Oh. Is that all? How stupid of you to come back and look tragic just for that. And as if I should not go without waiting for your permission, Monsieur! Why, I have just been making out a route. Come and look." He followed her finger mechanically with his eyes as she traced it over the map, and he made a great effort to compose himself. She exhausted France and Germany before she noticed his silence, and then she pushed away the Baedeker suddenly, and leaned back to try and see his face. He was standing a little behind her. "I wish you'd say something, Digby. You look as if you'd seen a ghost." "I have," he answered quietly, without taking his eyes from the top of her head. "Whose was it?" she asked, half puzzled, half amused. "My brother Jack's. He is in London."