“Not in the least,” Catherine replied coolly, “only if you unpack my trunks, I beg that you will allow my maid to fold and unfold my clothes.” “I do not think,” Colonel Henderson said to Lord Maltenby, “that I have any more questions to ask Miss Abbeway at present.” “In which case we will return to the drawing-room,” the Earl suggested a little stiffly. “Miss Abbeway, you will, I trust, accept my apologies for our intrusion upon you. I regret that any guest of mine should have been subjected to a suspicion so outrageous.” Catherine laughed softly. “Not outrageous really, dear Lord Maltenby,” she said. “I do not quite know of what I have been suspected, but I am sure Colonel Henderson would not have asked me these questions if it had not been his duty.” “If you had not been a guest in this house, Miss Abbeway,” the Colonel assured her, with some dignity, “I should have had you arrested first and questioned afterwards.” “You come of a race of men, Colonel Henderson, who win wars,” she declared graciously. “You know your own mind.” “You will be joining us presently, I hope?” Lord Maltenby enquired from the door. “In a very few minutes,” she promised. The door closed behind them. Catherine waited for a moment, then she sank a little hysterically into a chair. “I cannot avoid a touch of melodrama, you see,” she confessed. “It goes with my character and nationality. But seriously, now that that is over, I do not consider myself in the slightest danger. The poor fellow who was shot this morning belongs to a different order of people. He has been a spy over here since the beginning of the war.” “And what are you?” he asked bluntly. She laughed up in his face. “A quite attractive young woman,” she declared,--“at least I feel sure you will think so when you know me better.” CHAPTER VII It was about half-past ten on the following morning when Julian, obeying a stentorian invitation to enter, walked into Miles Furley’s sitting room. Furley was stretched upon the couch, smoking a pipe and reading the paper. “Good man!” was his hearty greeting. “I hoped you’d look me up this morning.” Julian dragged up the other dilapidated-looking easy-chair to the log fire and commenced to fill his pipe from the open jar. “How’s the leg?” he enquired. “Pretty nearly all right again,” Furley answered cheerfully. “Seems to me I was frightened before I was hurt. What about your head?” “No inconvenience at all,” Julian declared, stretching himself out. “I suppose I must have a pretty tough skull.” “Any news?” “News enough, of a sort, if you haven’t heard it. They caught the man who sandbagged me, and who I presume sawed your plank through, and shot him last night.” “The devil they did!” Furley exclaimed, taking his pipe from his mouth. “Shot him? Who the mischief was he, then?”