"Do you know," he said, "after I sent them I thought you'd consider me a bit--prompt." "I am learning something every day--about Englishmen," Jane managed to answer, with a ghost of a smile. "Always something good, I hope," Woodhouse was quick to retort, his eyes eagerly trying to fathom the cause of the girl's restraint. Lady Crandall, who had been vainly ringing for Jaimihr Khan, excused herself on the necessity of looking after the tea things. Jane experienced a quick stab of dread at finding herself alone with this man. Unexpected opportunity was urging a decision which an hour of solitude in her room had failed to bring. Yet she trembled, appalled and afraid to speak, before the very magnitude of the moment's exigency. "A spy--a spy!" whispered austere duty. "He will die!" her heart cried in protest. "Miss Gerson, it's good to see you again and know by your handclasp you have forgiven me for--for what was very necessary at the moment--last night--our meeting in the Splendide." Captain Woodhouse was standing before her now, his grave eyes looking down into hers. The girl caught a deep note of sincerity and something else--something vibrantly personal. Yet her tongue would not be loosed of its burden. "A very pretty speech," she answered, with attempted raillery. "I shall think of it on the boat going home." "I say, I wish you weren't always in that horrid state of mind--on your way home mentally," Captain Woodhouse challenged. "I shall be so in reality day after to-morrow, I hope," she replied. "Away from all this bewildering war and back in comfortable little New York." The man seemed genuinely grieved at her announcement. "New York must be worth while; but I imagine you have nothing picturesque--nothing old there. I'll wager you haven't a single converted monastery like Government House in all your city." "Not many things in New York have been converted," she answered, with a smile. "Our greatest need is for a municipal evangelist." False--all false, this banter! She knew it to be, and so she believed he must read it. And the man--his ease of manner was either that of innocence or of supreme nerve, the second not less to be admired than the first. Could it be that behind his serious eyes, now frankly telling her what she dared not let herself read in them, lay duplicity and a spy's cunning? "I fancy you New Yorkers suffer most from newness--newness right out of the shop," she heard him saying. "But the old things are the best. Imagine the monks of a long-ago yesterday toasting themselves before this ancient fireplace." He waved toward the massive Gothic mantel bridging a cavernous fireplace. An old chime bell, green with weathering, hung on a low frame beside the firedogs. "You're mistaken; that's manufactured antiquity," Jane caught him up. "Lady Crandall told me last night that fireplace is just five years old. One of the preceding governor's hobbies, it was."