His fruitless searching for a prop in emergency was broken by the appearance of Jane Gerson in the door opening from Lady Crandall's rooms to the right of the library. The girl was dressed for the out-of-doors; in her arms was a fragrant bunch of blood-red roses, spraying out from the top of a bronze bowl. The girl hesitated and drew back in confusion at seeing the room occupied; she seemed eager to escape undetected. But General Crandall smilingly checked her flight. "I--I thought you would be out," Jane stammered, "and----" "And the posies----" the general interrupted. "Were for you to enjoy when you should come back." She smiled easily into the man's eyes. "They'll look so much prettier here than in my room." "Very good of you, I'm sure." General Crandall stepped up to the rich cluster of buds and sniffed critically. Without looking at the girl, he continued: "It appears to me as though you had already made a conquest on the Rock. One doesn't pick these from the cliffs, you know." "I should hardly call it a conquest," Jane answered, with a sprightly toss of her head. "But a young man sent you these flowers. Come--confess!" The general's tone was bantering, but his eyes did not leave the piquant face under the chic summer straw hat that shaded it. "Surely. One of your own men--Captain Woodhouse, of the signal service." Jane was rearranging the stems in the bowl, apparently ready to accept what was on the surface of the general's rallying. "Woodhouse, eh? You've known him for a long time, I take it." "Since last night, General. And yet some people say Englishmen are slow." She laughed gaily and turned to face him. His voice took on a subtle quality of polite insistence: "Surely you met him somewhere before Gibraltar." "How could I, when this is the first time Captain Woodhouse has been out of Egypt for years?" "Who told you that?" The general was quick to catch her up. The girl felt a swift stab of fear. On the instant she realized that here was somebody attempting to drive into the mystery which she herself could not understand, but which she had pledged herself to keep inviolate. Her voice fluttered in her throat as she answered: "Why, he did himself, General." "He did, eh? Gave you a bit of his history on first meeting. Confiding chap, what! But you, Miss Gerson--you've been to Egypt, you say?" "No, General." Jane was beginning to find this cross-examination distinctly painful. She felt that already her pledge, so glibly given at Captain Woodhouse's insistence, was involving her in a situation the significance of which might prove menacing to herself--and one other. She could sense the beginnings of a strain between herself and this genial elderly gentleman, her host. "Do you know, Miss Gerson"--he was speaking soberly now--"I believe you and Captain Woodhouse have met before."