Armathwaite was at his wits end to decide on the sanest course. A man less versed than he in the complexities of life would have counseled her retreat to the cottage as the only practicable means of escape from a position bristling with difficulties; but some subtle and intuitive sense warned him that Marguerite Garth should, if possible, leave Elmdale without the knowledge which credited that house with a veritable ghost. "It's long after midnight," he persisted. "I'll have a snooze in a chair, and meet Betty Jackson before you show up. You can trust me absolutely to explain things to her." "You forget that she is worrying dreadfully about me. Please let me go!" "Very well," he said, driven to the half measures he had learnt to detest. "Promise me this--that you'll go straight to bed, and come here for breakfast without any conversation with the Jacksons." The girl showed her relief, not unmixed with surprise at a strangely-worded stipulation. "I'll do that," she said, after a little pause. "Mind you--no talk. Just 'Good-night, I'm dead tired,' and that sort of thing." "Yes," she agreed again, wonderingly. "And the same in the morning?" "I'll do my best." "Off with you, then! I'll come to the door, and stand there, in case you're challenged by anybody." "There's little fear of that in Elmdale at this hour," she said, with a new cheerfulness. He turned, ostensibly to pick up the electric torch. She was out in the hall instantly; when he rejoined her she was wearing the mackintosh. "Good-night!" she said. "Next to dad, you're the nicest man I've ever met, and I don't even know your name." "I'll introduce myself at breakfast," he growled, extinguishing the torch as he opened the door. He watched her swift run down the curving path to the gate, and heard her footsteps as she hurried into the village street. The night was so still that he knew when she turned into the front garden of the cottage, and he caught the tapping on a window, which, beginning timidly, soon grew more emphatic, perhaps more desperate. Some minutes passed. He could see the back of the cottage, and no gleam of light shone in any of its tiny windows. Then followed some decided thumping on a door, but the tenement might have been an empty barn for all the response that was forthcoming. Finally, he was aware of slow feet climbing dejectedly up the hill, and the garden gate creaked. "I can't make anybody hear," wailed a tearful voice. Armathwaite was even more surprised than the girl at this dramatic verification of his prophecy, but he availed himself of it as unscrupulously as any Delphic oracle. "I told you so," he said. "Now, come in and go to bed!" CHAPTER IV SHOWING HOW EXPLANATIONS DO NOT ALWAYS EXPLAIN Though weary and distrait, Marguerite Garth was of too frank a disposition to allow such an extraordinary incident to pass without comment. She halted in the porch by Armathwaite's side, and gazed blankly at the silent cottage.