“You’ll be glad to hear it needn’t last so long, after all.” “Not a year?” “Not any longer at all. I’ve come to release you now.” I found absolutely nothing to say. It was as if I’d been preparing to walk down a long corridor that stretched before me, and had found, after I’d gone a yard, that a door was slammed in my face. I seemed to stare at blank walls in every other direction.... I’d better say something.... What was there? “Thank you for letting me know.” Then, “As this has only lasted so much less than the time you said, I will send back to you my cheque for——” “You will do nothing of the kind, please,” curtly. “I made the arrangement. I break it.” “Yes, but that money——” “I shall not take it, anyhow.” “I shall send it somewhere, then,” I told him, and glanced round at the nearest group of grimy little Cockneys on the brown grass. “The Fresh Air Fund.” “As you please.” A pause. I was wondering if he meant me to say anything else. He began again. “I expect you guess my reason for this change of arrangement.” “I think—I do,” I said. Yes, I thought, whatever it was that stood between him and an open engagement to Mademoiselle Charrier must be at an end, and Miss Trant, alias “Nancy,” is no longer needed for the rôle of the red herring on the trail. But his next remark almost startled me out of my chair. “Ah! You mean you quite realize that in breaking this contract, I’m considering _your_ feelings. It is for _your_ sake.” “_Mine?_” “Naturally!” he said sharply. “When I saw that the arrangement had become so irksome to you—when I saw _why_——” I turned to stare up at his temper-set face, repeating “When?” “Need you ask when? Last night,” he said, still more sharply, “at Holyhead Station.” Ah! Then he _had_ thought—what I’d wondered about. It was my turn to look set with anger; I know I flushed. Let him go on. “Yesterday, first thing in the morning, you get that wire, handed in at Euston. A message that’s obviously—well, a fake. Didn’t you arrange to receive it?” “Yes,” I admitted shortly. “I did.” “Ah. I knew that, Miss Trant. Following on that, I find you travelling back to London the very same evening with that—that friend of yours, Mr. Vandeleur. Rather a coincidence.” “You mean,” I said, my heart thumping with rage, partly against Cicely’s adorer for making this trouble, partly against this other man with his savage tone and suspicious eyes, “that you think I told him to send the wire!” “There was the wire! And there _he_ was.” “Even if it had been so, why not?” “With you engaged to me?” “Nominally!” “Makes no difference to the circumstances!” he shot out. “Who knows that, but you and I? To anyone else, it would have looked uncommonly——”