Gilbert Baynton stayed on at Rosedean for quite another half-hour, but nothing more was said on the subject which was filling his mind and that of his hostess. They walked about the pretty, miniature garden, talking in a desultory way over old times, and about some of the people they had both known years ago. And then, at last, she took him to the gate. They looked at one another like two augurs, and he said under his breath, "Well, it's a pretty kettle of fish I've come home to, eh? I thought there was some sort of mystery. I'm very much obliged to you for having put me on the track to solve the riddle." "Ah," she said, "but the riddle isn't solved yet, Mr. Baynton, is it?" He answered, gravely for him, "No, those sorts of riddles are very hard to solve." He hesitated, then exclaimed in a meaning tone, "Still, they _are_ solved sometimes, Mrs. Winslow." * * * * * It was late the same night, a warm, St. Martin's summer night, and Mrs. Tropenell, sitting alone after dinner, made an excuse of a telephone message to join her son and Gillie Baynton out of doors. After Baynton's return from The Chase the two men had gone off for a long walk together over the downs, and they had come home so late that dinner had had to be put off for half an hour. Instead of joining her later, they had gone out again, but this time only into the garden. Noiselessly she moved across the grass, and then, just as she was going to step under the still leaf-draped pergola, she heard her son's voice--a voice so charged with emotion and pain that, mastered by her anxiety, she stopped just behind one of the brick arches, and listened. "You'll oblige me, Baynton, by keeping your sister's name out of this." "Oh, very well! I thought you'd be glad to know what that woman said to me--I mean Mrs. Winslow." "I'm not glad. I'm sorry. Mrs. Winslow is mistaken." The short sentence came out with laboured breath as if with difficulty, and the one who overheard them, the anguished eavesdropper, felt her heart stirred with bitter impotence. How Oliver cared--how much Oliver cared! "Why are you so sure of that?" Again she heard Baynton's full, caressing voice. "Laura's a very reserved woman! I'd rather believe her best friend--apparently Katty _is_ her best friend--about such a thing as this. You've admitted that _you_ love her." And as the other made no answer, Gillie went on, speaking in a very low voice, but with every word clearly audible from the place where Mrs. Tropenell stood listening: "Of course I won't mention Laura--as it upsets you so much! But after all, my hatred for Pavely and my love for my sister are the two strongest things in my life. Surely you know that well enough, Tropenell? I can't bar Laura out!" And then came the answer, muttered between the speaker's teeth: "I understand that, Baynton."