“Splendid! All dark and empty oh. Come forrard. We’ll persuade one of the front windows.” They pushed through between the soft cypresses and reached the lawn in front of the cottage where the grey stone path went from the timber porch to the hedge of yews. Kentucky and the chauffeur piled their war-plant in the porch, and being rapid young gentlemen, lost no time in attacking one of the front windows. “We are not going to burn this house!” Eve hardly knew her own voice when she spoke. It sounded so thin, and quiet, and cold. Lizzie Straker whisked round like a snappy terrier. “What did you say?” “This house is not going to be burnt.” “What rot are you talking?” “I mean just what I say.” “Don’t talk bosh!” “I tell you, I am in earnest.” Lizzie Straker made a quick movement, and snatched at Eve’s wrist. She thrust her face forward with a kind of back-street truculence. “What d’you mean?” “What I have said.” “Joan, d’you hear? She’s trying to rat. What’s the matter with you?” “Nothing. Only I have ceased to believe in these methods.” “Oh, you have, have you!” Even in the dim light Eve could see the expanded nostrils and threatening eyes. “Let my wrist go!” “Not a bit of it. What’s this particular house to you? What have you turned soft for? Out with it. I suppose there’s a man somewhere at the back of your mind.” There was a sound in Lizzie Straker’s voice that reminded Eve of the ripping of calico. “I am simply telling you that this cottage is not going to be burnt.” “Joan, d’you hear that? You—you can’t stop it!” Eve twisted free. “I have only to shout rather strenuously. The Fernhill people are on the alert. Unless you tell Mr. Kentucky, or Galahad as you please to call him——” Lizzie Straker sprang at her like a wild cat. “Sneak, rat, moral prostitute!” Eve had never had to face such a mad thing, a thing that was so tempestuously and hysterically vindictive. Lizzie Straker might have been bred in the slums and taught to bite and kick and scratch like a frenzied animal. “You beast! You sneak! We shan’t burn the place, shan’t we? Leave her to me, Joan, I say. I’ll teach her to play the traitor!” Eve was a strong young woman, but she was attacked by a fanatic who was not too furious to forget the Japanese tricks she had learnt at a wrestling school. “I’ve got you. I’ll pin you down, you beastly sneak!” She tripped Eve and threw her, and squirming over her, pinioned Eve’s right arm in such a way that she had her at her mercy. “You little brute, you’re breaking my arm!” “I will break it, if you don’t lie still.”