Arthur, still unwilling to leave Cora, who meanwhile had ungratefully turned her back upon him and was sitting close to Delia on the sofa, talking to her in a low voice, coughed to attract the attention of the girl who had enchanted him. Cora looked carelessly over her shoulder. “Isn’t there anything I can do for you?” he asked in a low, hoarse voice. “Nothing whatever, thank you,” she replied coldly. “I’ve done with all of you. I’ve had to be civil long enough; now I can be natural, and--good-bye.” She held out her hand quite abruptly and coldly. He took it, held it for a moment in fingers that trembled, and then, dropping it with just one reproachful look at her, would almost have staggered as he went away, but for Gerard, who took him by the arm, and led him to the inner door. It was locked. “May we go out?” asked Gerard of the nearest policeman. There was a pause, and the man went into the next room to consult Cecil Jones, came back with the key of the door, opened it, and silently let the two young men into the hall. Here a couple of frightened maid-servants and a sullen footman were sitting on the stairs, discussing the amazing situation. “Has Miss Davison gone away?” asked Gerard of one of them. But she only shook her head, and, looking horribly alarmed, told him that she knew nothing, and that they had been warned not to say anything to anybody except the police. With which discomfiting information the two young men had to be content, as they went out of the Priory for the last time. CHAPTER XXIV, AND LAST They walked in silence down the drive, with that sinking of the heart inevitable when a pleasant time comes suddenly to an end. But there was more than this to trouble them both. The thoughts of the young men were with the girls who had enchanted them. Arthur was pondering, with the deepest pain, the terrible awakening he had had only a short time before, from the dream that he had found a pearl among women, a very queen of girls. He had made up his mind to take courage, and to ask Cora to be his wife, although he was afraid that his own prospects, good as they were, might not seem golden enough to tempt the parents of the sweet-voiced Cora to yield their consent to his wooing. But of Cora herself he had entertained no doubts. And to find that the charms which had fascinated him, the bright wit which had amused him, had been merely part of the stock-in-trade of one of a party of adventurers, bent on making a good thing out of British credulity while their time of prosperity lasted, was such a shock that it left him dazed, unable to think or to understand. Gerard, on his side, though he was not suffering, like his friend, from a great disillusion, was in a state of terrible anxiety. Where was Rachel? Had she compromised herself with these adventurers? And had she alone of them all had the cleverness to escape the net laid for their feet by the police?