"This afternoon I went motoring, I and a friend of mine--Mr. John Richards. We took a wrong turn coming back, and of course were horribly late. But at the edge of the square we stopped a minute to inquire about Mrs. Hackley, who was taken quite ill yesterday afternoon. Just as I was getting back into the car, up ran this Mr. Higginson, very much flustered and excited. You see, he had just found out about all this--this plot--even to knowing where you were; he had seen poor Jim Hackley, it seems, not at all himself, and overheard him talking. Of course, we saw that you must be warned at once, so we took him in the car, and all three of us ran back here." She paused a moment, and he prompted her with a close-clipped: "Yes?" "I wanted him to--come in and tell you about it," she said hesitatingly--"but he wouldn't do it. He is a most agreeable old man, but, I imagine--of a very nervous temperament. So," she added with a hurried little laugh, "as I was the only one who--knew you, I said that I would come in and tell you myself." "It was most kind--most kind of you all." He turned away sharply to hide his sudden rush of indignation and resentment. Turbulently he longed to get his hands upon the sly Higginson, who had had the effrontery to dispatch a woman to protect him, and this woman of all others that lived in Hunston.... Protect him? Hardly. That an attack had been planned against his person was, indeed, likely enough, but not that any hireling of Ryan's should rush forward hysterically to pluck him from his peril. What move in that mysterious game, what strange plot within a plot was here?... "Did Mr. Higginson happen to explain why he took such a generous, and I fear very troublesome, interest in my welfare?" Genuinely anxious for light, he tried to iron all suggestion of a sneer out of his voice, but evidently he did not quite succeed. "Oh, I don't think you ought to speak that way! Surely he has done only what anybody would do for any stranger who was in danger and didn't know it." "And you?" She looked at him rather shyly out of her somewhat spectacular eyes. "That explains me, too--if you wish." "Maginnis and I," said Varney immediately, "are not going out for some time yet. Oh, a long, long time! These poor fellows you speak of will tire of waiting long before that. And when we do go--" "You must not go together." "I don't think I understand you." "Don't you see," she said, speaking very earnestly, "that that is exactly what they are hoping for? This ambuscade didn't just happen--it is manufactured--it is politics. Men like these haven't the initiative, or whatever you call it, to get up a thing of this sort. Some one has done it for them. Don't you know why? _They want to get rid of Mr. Maginnis_. But they can't hurt him _alone_--without having it brought right home to them--to the politicians. With you--it is--different--"