"It was you, then?" "Well, father, of course, approved, but I locked the door. And after I had found out the truth, I could have murdered myself! But why did you puzzle us so?" Her charm and sincerity and animation almost made me tell her there and then, but I had just enough hold of myself to ask instead, "But this doesn't explain how you came to find me out this time?" "Well in a way it does; for I knew then that Roger Merton was your real name and then I remembered where I had heard it before, and I knew you were the same person. When you called as Mr. Hobhouse that first day I hadn't the least suspicion to begin with, and then suddenly you began to look familiar--" "With this beard!" "Well, your face isn't all hidden by your beard and I thought I recognised the other bits. If I hadn't known you were an actor--" "A pretty bad one, it appears," I interposed. "Oh, no, indeed, you were simply splendid! You still kept me puzzled and only half certain even after I had met you and Captain Whiteclett walking together and noticed you move apart when you saw me. In fact I wasn't sure till that walk along the shore. I arranged that to make quite certain." "You arranged it!" I exclaimed. "The deuce you did, Miss Rendall!" She laughed defiantly. "I was dying to make sure! So when I saw you coming towards the house, I rushed into my things and went out to meet you. I thought if I could take you the same walk as we had been before, you could hardly help doing something to give yourself away. And at last you did!" "May I ask what my relapse was?" "When I got you to the same place as last time and said the same thing, I noticed you jump. And then you did really rather give yourself away when I asked you if you wanted to look at the rocks, and you jumped at the chance. I know nothing about antiquities--not even as much as you do, Mr. Merton--" "Hit me again!" I laughed. "Oh, but it was very clever of you to pretend to be so learned!" she hastened to say. "Still, I did know that there are no antiquities below high water mark, so I knew you just wanted to inspect the place where something happened to you before." "Where what happened?" I enquired. "That's what I want you to tell me! Oh, if you only knew how I've died to know what happened that night!" "How do you know anything happened?" "I guessed," she said. This may not sound convincing on paper, but it did as she said it. I was almost ready, in fact, to swear by Jean Rendall now. "And so you made sure of Thomas Hobhouse!" I said. "But why then didn't you unmask him at once?" "Oh, but it wasn't my business to! Of course I had guessed what you were doing here--" "What?" "Trying to rid our island of traitors of course! I had interfered with you once, but I wasn't going to do it again. In fact I tried to reassure you by talking of my walk with Mr. Merton."