And besides--she felt herself growing far too fond of Jimmy for half-love. She wanted Jimmy; wanted him very badly; wanted him worse than she had ever wanted anything in her life. In point of fact--it had come to that now--she couldn't "jolly well live without Jimmy"; and would undoubtedly have yielded to Jimmy's persistence before the spring, had it not been for Eva Martin's interference. That resolute lady of the cold blue eyes, the fading gold hair, and the hard unpleasant hands came to London early in January with the avowed intention of "putting matters straight once and for all." With Aliette, invited to luncheon at the Ladies' Army and Navy Club (irreverently known as "Arms and Necks" to junior subalterns), she failed completely, Ronnie's "wife" refusing, tight-lipped, even to discuss the situation. But with Mollie the sisterly machinations attained, in some slight degree, their trouble-making objective. "You see, my dear," said the colonel's lady, "you're such a child that one really oughtn't to take you into one's confidence at all. But unfortunately this sort of thing can't be glossed over. In a way, I need hardly tell you, I'm very sorry for poor Alie. When I compare my own Harold with her Hector, I realize Hector's inferiority. All the same,"--this last with both elbows firmly on the tea-table--"the only course to be pursued, believe me, is for Aliette to return to her husband." "But that would be perfectly beastly," retorted Mollie, the mild antagonism she had always felt for Eva turning to intensest dislike. "Beastly or not," decided the colonel's lady, with some asperity, "it's the only thing to be done." And she added, with that bitter-sweetness which made Colonel Harold Martin look back upon the western front during the great war as the only peaceful place he had ever known: "Let me remind you, dear child, that there isn't only Alie to be considered. There are your own chances. You'll want to be getting married one of these days, and naturally, no man in a good position----" The sentence trailed off into a silence as suggestive as the atmosphere Eva left behind her when she trailed out of Betty Masterman's flat; so strengthening the girl's weakened decision that Jimmy Wilberforce, who dropped in half an hour later to plead his own and his baronet father's cause, found himself confronted with a white face, a pair of haggard eyes, and the tense ultimatum, "Jimmy, I'll marry you the day Hector sets Alie free, but not a day before." CHAPTER XXIII 1 England has not yet quite forgotten the "Bournemouth Tragedy" during which Hector Brunton, who led for the Crown, first became known to the public as the "hanging prosecutor."