“Evening, Mrs. Nesbitt,” he said, on the impulse of the moment. “Will you come over to the police-station, please?” “Certainly,” Cynthia agreed charmingly. “Are you going to arrest me?” “Jolly good mind to,” growled the Colonel, who was not going to beat about bushes any longer. “I’ll pay you one compliment, though, Mrs. Nesbitt. You don’t look as if you’d been spending the day in a tool-shed and scrambled out through the roof, I must say.” “What!” exclaimed the astonished Cynthia, who had anticipated certain unpleasant topics of conversation but certainly not tool-sheds. “You look,” amplified the Colonel, making his point clearer, “as if you’d just come back from a day in London.” “But that’s just what I have done!” “What!” exclaimed the Colonel in his turn. Cynthia amplified her own point. Seeing that the Colonel looked sceptical, she led him into the station and produced for him unimpeachable evidence, in the shape of a grinning porter-ticket-inspector, that she really had left Duffley on the 9.47 train for London, and returned on the 6.19. “Well, I’ll be damned!” said the Colonel. “Don’t you think you’d better tell me exactly what was in your mind?” Cynthia asked gently, and smiled at him. The Colonel hesitated, took another look at the smile, then led her out into the road and told her. “Poor Mr. Foster,” said Cynthia, her lips twitching. “And now, Colonel, I think you’d better take me along to that police-station of yours. I want to talk to you a little, and I can’t very well do it here.” She smiled at him again. The Colonel took her. He led her into the Inspector’s room and ejected that worthy into the company of Constable Graves. He put Cynthia into the best chair and smiled at her. Cynthia smiled back. Then Cynthia talked, and as she talked she smiled. The Colonel grew as wax before her, and the more Cynthia smiled the more the Colonel melted. In a quarter of an hour he was a deliquescent mass, promising impossible things in all directions. “And you really ought to apologise to Mr. Foster, you know,” smiled Cynthia, as she rose at last to go. The Colonel even promised this. “Damn it, I’ll do it this evening,” said the deliquescent Colonel. It is quite certain that he really meant to do so too, at the moment. Fortunately, however, for his official dignity, a circumstance had already arisen which was to make it impossible for this particular promise to be fulfilled. At the very moment when the Colonel was giving utterance to it Mr. Foster was standing in his big double bedroom with a dazed expression on his face and a letter in his hand.