The two men stood together observing her. Up came Mrs. Martini, slim and willowy and dressed in the extreme of the skin-tight fashions of that year. “What are you two looking so gloomy about?” inquired she. Richmond scowled. “Gloomy?” said he, with a disagreeable laugh. “We feel anything but gloomy. That is--er--of course my feelings are somewhat confused. I’ve just learned that Peter’s going to take Beatrice away from me the end of next month.” Peter’s smile in response to Mrs. Martini’s effusive congratulations was sickly, was with difficulty kept alive long enough to meet the requirements of conventionality. Beatrice had not shown the faintest sign that she was conscious of imprisonment. So far as Richmond observed, not once had she made any attempt to break through or even to explore the limits assigned her. Had it not been for the discontent plain to see upon Peter’s florid, vigorously healthy countenance throughout the four days he lingered at Red Hill, Richmond would have assumed that his daughter had regained her reason as he had felt confident she would. Beatrice did make an effort in public to treat Peter as her fiancé; but she had to give it up. Her nerves refused to assist her in her game of hypocrisy beyond a certain point--and Peter had become physically repulsive to her. She did not regard this defect in her otherwise perfect pose as serious. She knew that her father was not one to relax vigilance because he had won. So, what advantage would there be in striving, and probably failing, to remove his last suspicion? Without betraying herself she had thoroughly examined all the metes and bounds of her prison. She found it everywhere worthy of her father’s minute ingenuity. By means of his pretext of alarm about cranks and kidnapers she was being thoroughly spied upon without the spies suspecting what they were really about. By day there were the personal guards, to inform him if she tried to communicate with Roger either personally or by message. By night there were the watchman within and the three patrolmen without, and a system of burglar alarms that made it impossible for anyone either to leave or to enter without flooding the whole house with light and starting up a clamor of bells from attics to cellars. Apparently she was as free as air--free to roam anywhere in the vast wilderness surrounding the gardens and terraces and lawns from the midst of which the big chateau rose. Really, she could not move a step in secret--and to give Roger the warning she must see him face to face without her father’s knowledge. For, if her father purposed to keep faith with her, it would be folly to give him reason to feel he would do well to ruin Roger anyhow; and, if he did not purpose to keep the agreement under which she had returned and had accepted Peter, it would be madness to provoke him to attack Roger immediately. She must see Roger secretly. But how?