SWEET ADVENTURE

Mary Burchell

When Nicola set out on a short motoring holiday, she vaguely hoped to encounter some sort of adventure. She wasn't prepared, however, for the bewildering net of events in which she found herself caught.

To lose her way was bad enough, but to find herself involved in a dramatic, sudden death, to become the temporary guardian of a small girl - and then to have the course of her own life changed. This was more than Nicola had bargained for.

How she became involved in the complicated pattern of a strange household, and how, after anxieties and disappointments, she eventually found love and happiness, make an enthralling story.

CHAPTER I

"this," Nicola told herself rather disconsolately, as she stopped the car and gazed around her at the bleak moorland scenery, "is what is called adventure. Heroine lost in the midst of nowhere and night coming on. No one to thank but herself. Oh, dear! Why did I leave that map on the table in the inn? Fate—or just plain stupidity?"

She took out her cigarette case, and allowed herself the luxury of a cigarette and a review of the situation. For the last half-hour at least, though she had pushed on determinedly, there had seemed very little point in doing so, since she had no idea where she was going and her petrol gauge was registering more depressing news every few minutes.

"A really experienced and sensible motorist would be able to deduce all sorts of useful information from the light—such as there is—and the wind and that sort of thing." She spoke aloud, because even her own voice was better than none in this great waste of silence. "But beginners ought to stick to main roads, I suppose, and not try the bypaths of places like Westmorland and Cumberland."

She drew thoughtfully on her cigarette, and looked round her again for any signs of civilisation. The sun had slid below the horizon quite a while ago, and now the grey light was fading, and every moment more colour seemed to drain from the landscape and outlines to become less clearly defined.

It had been silly, really, not to make the best of that queer little hamlet she had passed some way back. At least, she could probably have found shelter for the night there. But, because this modest motor tour—the first of her experience— had seemed such an adventure, to spend the very first night in quite such undistinguished surroundings had appeared out of keeping with the general level of her spirits and expectations.

"A night in the open would be much more uncomfortable, of course," she told herself. "But it would also rank as a much more unusual experience."

However, a chilly breeze lifted the dark hair on her forehead just then and a few cold drops of rain spattered the windscreen, and a night in the open—though still ranking as an unusual experience—became an experience which she was not particularly anxious to sample just then.

She could turn round, and go back the way she had come, of course. But a streak of obstinacy urged Nicola rather to keep on. Inexperienced motorist she might be, but she was proud of no longer having to display an amateurish "L" on the back of any vehicle she drove. She felt in full command of any situation—and her car; the battered little car which her Cousin Laura had so kindly lent her for ten days while she herself went abroad.

Nicola meant to extract every moment of enjoyment from each one of those ten days. She would go on, she decided. No one in search of adventure ever went back.

The road was not a bad one, really. It was almost certain to lead to another hamlet—or even to a village—soon.

It did nothing of the sort, however. So far as Nicola was concerned, it very nearly led into a head-on collision with a big tree-trunk which had fallen across the road.

She pulled up just in time, oddly scared by the incongruity of this great thing apparently blown down on a night when there was nothing but a light, cold breeze. It was as though there were something deliberate about the incident, and, before she regained a hold of her common sense, Nicola felt her heart come into her throat at the curious idea that someone had been responsible for this, rather than the impersonal elements.

With something of an effort—because to leave the intimate and almost cosy interior of the car for the immense and chilly outside scared her—Nicola stepped out of the car and went to examine the tree.

Immediately she was reassured. Big and grand though it must have looked when it towered above the road, casting its shade through many summers and weathering the snow and gales of many winters, it had obviously, like so many treacherous elm trees before it, been rotten at its heart. And, probably less than twenty-four hours ago, it had evidently succumbed to the insidious decay and come crashing to the ground.

The naturalness of the phenomenon completely restored her nerves to their usual even level, and Nicola stood there considering the only other problem which arose—what was she to do now?

She had passed a very narrow uphill turning on her right, two or three minutes ago. She might try that. Now she came to think of it, it had looked the kind of path which might lead to some sort of habitation.

So Nicola got back into her car and turned in the narrow road with a skill which cheered her and made her wish that her severe instructor of a few months ago could have witnessed this performance; a performance vastly superior to any she had been able to display to him.

Rather slowly she retraced her way for something like half a mile and found her opening. It was narrower even than she had thought, and not so promising as her anxious recollection had made it out to be. But still, it was a path.

Her heart was beating more heavily than she liked to admit as, cautiously, Nicola edged the car along the winding pathway. She was already regretting her choice, already wishing that she had decided to go straight back the way she had come, and make the best of whatever she could find in that hamlet. It was stupid to be caught like this on the very first night. It only showed ‑

Trees and shrubs seemed to loom like a wall in front of her, then divided to allow the path to wind between them, and suddenly the most welcome sight in the world broke upon Nicola's relieved gaze. A small house, or large cottage, stood in a clearing in front of her, and from a ground-floor window a dim light was showing. Someone must live here. Indeed, now that she had time to look round, she saw that another car—a much smarter affair than hers—was standing at the side of the clearing.

Rather stiffly she got out. And, as she did so, the front door of the house was flung open and a man stepped out.

He was youngish, she thought, so far as she could judge in the light from her headlamps, and his hair was dark and dishevelled and his face showed signs of evident distress— even fear, Nicola felt.

"Who's that?" he cried out sharply, and Nicola came forward into the ring of light.

"I'm awfully sorry to come knocking you up at this hour, but I've lost my way ‑" she began.

He interrupted her immediately, however.

"Thank heaven you're here. I can go for a doctor now. My wife is ill, and there's no telephone. She's asleep at the moment. Will you stay with her while I go?"

"Why, of course. I'd offer to go, only I don't know ‑"

"No, no." He rejected that suggestion almost violently. "Just go in and sit there with her. Don't disturb her."

And with a vague gesture which seemed to urge her towards the open front door, he ran across to his car, jumped in, and drove off very much faster than Nicola would have cared to negotiate that winding path.

Remembering the admonition not to disturb the sick woman, Nicola tiptoed into the house.

A tiny hall gave on to the one room where a light was burning and, as far as Nicola could see, a short flight of stairs almost facing the front door led up to the first floor. There were one or two other doors, but they were closed, and Nicola quietly entered the one lighted room.

The girl lying there—for she looked very little more than a girl—was not in bed. She was on a settee, with a blanket thrown over her, and she lay with her head turned away from Nicola and the light.

Nicola was practical enough to interpret her instructions exactly and, intent on not disturbing the sleeper, she sat down in the nearest chair, prepared to remain still and silent unless she were actually needed.

It was not specially cold in the room. Indeed, if anything, the atmosphere was close and a little airless, as though the place had been shut up for some time. And, looking round her, Nicola noticed with surprise, now that her eyes were growing used to the rather dim light, that there was a light film of dust on the surface of the furniture nearest to her.

She frowned, groping after some puzzling impression which seemed to elude her. Her senses sharpened gradually, like those of an animal which was not exactly afraid but vaguely suspicious. Something was not quite right about all this, she thought, although she tried hard to resist the idea and assured herself that she was being fanciful—that the unusual nature of the situation was what disturbed her.

It was odd perhaps that the sick girl was not in bed. But then she might have been taken ill downstairs and her husband have been afraid to move her. If they lived here ‑

But perhaps, they did not live here. Perhaps they, like herself, had been stranded, and had come across this place and thankfully taken possession of it in the extremity of emergency when the girl was taken ill.

A few moments' reflection told Nicola that this was not really very likely. How had they got in, for one thing? And wouldn't the man have chosen, rather, to drive straight on to the nearest doctor? How desperate did one have to be to take summary possession of someone else's property?

She wondered now why the idea had even occurred to her.

And then she knew the answer.

Because it fitted in with her vaguely puzzled impression of something being wrong. Somehow that agitated young man at the door, and the silent girl on the settee, no more fitted into this place than she did herself.

The dusty room, the silent house, all gave the impression of a place which had been deserted and then suddenly invaded. Even the slightly stuffy atmosphere confirmed that. Not a clock was ticking anywhere. There was no sound but her own breathing.

No sound but her own breathing!

For some reason or other, Nicola felt the hairs lift at the nape of her neck. She held her breath and listened. Held it until she had to expel it again in a long gasp. Then, though she had started to shake' unaccountably, she repeated the process.

When she held her breath there was no other sound in the room at all. Not a single whisper of a sound from the girl on the settee.

She was not breathing!

Putting her hands on the arms of the chair in which she was sitting, Nicola almost literally pushed herself to her feet and crossed the room.

She stood looking down at the silent, motionless figure. Then, conquering her feeling of horror—because it was preposterous to feel horror for something so young and pretty and helpless—she put out her hand and touched the girl's cheek.

It was soft and delicate—and quite cold.

"No," Nicola whispered aloud. "No!"

And then, because she was a practical girl and not without courage, her first impulse was to do her duty by another human creature, even though she felt certain there was nothing further that anyone could do.

She took the girl's wrist in her hand and tried for long, silent minutes to find the faintest thread of a pulse. Then, because she had often read that this was the simplest test, she reached for her handbag and, with oddly fumbling fingers, drew out her powder compact, which had a mirror inside the lid.

Again for unnumbered anxious minutes she held the mirror to the girl's lips. It looked curiously and pathetically frivolous, with its gaily enamelled back, and quite unsuited for the tragic use to which it was being put. But its bright surface remained unclouded. And, with some return of the horror which she had thrust from her, Nicola allowed herself to believe at last that the girl was dead.

She had never seen anyone dead before, and what struck her most was the pitiful naturalness of the girl's pose: as though she had just gently fallen asleep where she was lying.

The poor husband, when he came back! It would be for Nicola to break the news to him. The doctor would be there, of course. But—she would have to say some word of preparation first.

Had he any inkling of the seriousness of his wife's condition? He had said she was asleep, but he had looked frightened and distraught. He had been in a fearful hurry to fetch the doctor. He had almost fled from the place ‑

Nicola stood quite still in the middle of the room, and then she slowly rubbed her hands over cheeks which had grown strangely cold.

He had almost fled from the place. That was—what—ten minutes, quarter of an hour ago?

But the girl lying there was quite cold. How soon after death did ‑?

Nicola swallowed, clutched grimly at her self-control, and tried to thrust from her the conviction that had come upon her. But it returned, slowly, resistlessly—the only conviction which somehow satisfied every one of her previous doubts and her bewilderment.

The man had known the girl was dead when he fled from the house.

He had said he was going for a doctor. He had told Nicola not to disturb the girl whom he had called his wife. In fact, he had done everything that a man improvising in a hurry could do to ensure that any investigation would be delayed. With luck—from his point of view—she might have gone on sitting there quietly for ages, wondering perhaps at the length of time it took him to find a doctor, but reminding herself how deserted the district was.

With dreadful reluctance she admitted that everything was beginning to fall into place. He had not gone for any doctor. He had just fled into the night, leaving Nicola alone in a deserted cottage on the moors, with no one for company but this quiet, dead girl, who was quite unknown to her.

It was fortunate that Nicola was not of an hysterical nature. The next few minutes were among the worst of her life. Her first impulse was to go from the place as fast as her legs and her car would carry her.

But she arrested the rising tide of panic in her, and reminded herself that she had nothing on which to base this new conviction of hers but her frightened instinct.

The man's story might have been correct. Perhaps he had thought his wife had been asleep for the last hour or so, only he dared not either leave her or disturb her until someone else came. In any case, she herself was inexperienced enough in these matters. Maybe the girl could have been alive when her husband left.

It was certainly not for her to panic and flee from the place if she had been left in trust here by some poor soul who believed, in all good faith, that he had a chance of saving his wife's life.

She must sit here and wait. How long she could not and would not face. She had no idea where the nearest doctor might be found. For all she knew, the man hadn't either. Always supposing that he had really gone for a doctor.

If she sat there for an hour, and no one had then come, would she be justified in going? Would she, even, have the courage to get up and move out of this silent place into the night? Grope around with the controls of her not very familiar car, and flee from the scene, knowing—as she must know by then—that someone had deliberately involved her in this terrible position?

She tried to fix her thoughts on something very normal and familiar. Her cousin, handing over the car and telling her not to expect adventure at every corner, because that was just not the way modern life worked out. Herself choosing her modest outfit and her few practical necessities to take with her on this holiday.

At any rate, her cousin would never again be able to say that the opening of the trip had not presented Nicola with an adventure—albeit a tragic and melancholy one.

Sitting alone here ‑

And at that moment the very faintest sound impinged upon her consciousness, and she knew with dreadful certainty that she was not alone.

Someone was moving about cautiously upstairs.

Nicola was thankful that her training had been a sensible and reasonably disciplined one. To scream was as unnatural a mode of expression to her as to weep extravagantly. Self-control was a blessed habit which clung to her, even in this horrifying moment.

She rose to her feet, although her legs felt like rubber, and the blood beat so loudly in her head that she was afraid she would not hear the cautious approach of whoever was coming.

There was a faint scuffling noise now, as though a hand felt its way fumblingly along the banister.

And then, just as Nicola felt she could bear the strain no longer, a child's rather timid voice called:

"Mummie, are you there? I want you. I want a drink."

Nicola felt almost faint with relief—and also experienced a certain degree of shame at her inability to identify the harmless explanation of the sounds which had terrified her.

Then the next moment she realised the first essential—to keep the child from realising what had happened. And, catching up the lamp in her shaking hand, she went out into the hall.

"Hallo, darling," she said, trying to make her voice as natural and her smile as reassuring as possible. "I'll get your drink for you. But you must go back to ted or you'll catch cold."

A little girl of about ten was standing half-way down the stairs. She was in pyjamas, and her thick dark hair fell over her forehead in a heavy fringe, while her large, dark, suspicious eyes regarded Nicola with no marked favour.

"Who are you?" she inquired uncompromisingly.

"Just a friend who dropped in," explained Nicola, feeling foolish and over-bright before that level, searching gaze.

"Does the house belong to you?"

Then they did not live here!

"Oh, no," Nicola said. "I was motoring and lost my way. And as I was passing here I—came in."

"Where's Mummie?"

"She's asleep. We mustn't disturb her."

"She never slept so long before. She didn't even wake up when that man lifted her out of the car."

Nicola felt she was on the fringe of some sort of explanation, and, loath though she was to let the child stand there in the cold, she felt impelled to ask:

"Did your mummie fall asleep in the car, then?"

"Yes. I told you." The little girl seemed to think poorly of Nicola's powers of deduction.

"And then you stopped here, and—your daddy carried her into the house?"

"I didn't say he was my daddy." The child gave her another of those odd, searching glances.

"I thought—wasn't he, then?" Nicola asked impulsively.

"I don't know," was the extraordinary thing the little girl said", speaking rather slowly. "Mummie said so, but ‑" She allowed the sentence to tail off unfinished, the doubt in her own mind very obvious on her face. "Where is he?" she added, after a moment.

"He has gone out,'' Nicola explained, rather lamely, she feared.

But the little girl seemed satisfied with the fact, without requiring any amplification.

"I hope he doesn't come back," was all she said. "Can I have a drink, please?"

"Yes, of course."

"And I'm hungry too, as a matter of fact," the little girl added confidentially.

Nicola smiled.

"I'll try to find you something to eat as well," she promised. "Shall I fight you back to your room, before I go and investigate?"

"It doesn't matter. I can feel my way."

Evidently the dark held no fears for this curious child. But, all the same, Nicola came up the stairs and held the lamp high so that the little girl could see her way back into the bedroom at the top of the stairs.

Then Nicola went down again, not without having to conquer a great reluctance to do so, and set to work to explore the kitchen regions.

Here everything was as dusty and deserted-looking as the rest of the house. But there were signs that someone had hastily unpacked a picnic-hamper of sorts, which still stood on the table, with half its contents pulled out at random.

To her relief, Nicola discovered a bottle of milk, a loaf and some butter, and a small basket of fruit. Soothed by the homely task, she cut some bread and butter, washed a couple of dusty cups and plates, and then carried these and the fruit and milk upstairs once more.

It meant two journeys, because she had to manage the lamp as well. But the little girl, sitting up in bed and regarding the scene with intense interest, said nothing until Nicola had returned the second time and the meal was spread out for her enjoyment.

Then she smiled slowly, drank the milk which Nicola had poured out for her and said:

"That's better."

Nicola smiled, secretly touched by the milky rim round that soft red mouth, and the air of appreciation with which her bread and butter was being attacked.

"You were more than ready for something, weren't you?" she said sympathetically. "Didn't you have any supper?"

"No. The man said I must go straight to bed, as Mummie was asleep. And although I was hungry I did go to sleep for a little while."

"I see."

Nicola didn't see completely, but some idea of the situation was beginning to take shape in her mind. She was not the only one who had been doing some thinking, however. The little girl fixed her with a thoughtful gaze and said:

"Are you a neighbour?"

"Oh, no. I don't belong to this part of the country at all. That's how I got lost in my car, you know. I thought I might get a night's lodging here. And then, just as I came up to the cottage, your fa ‑a man came out and asked me to stay here with you and your mother as he had to go out."

"Go out?" The little girl frowned. "Where was he going?"

"I don't know. He didn't stop to tell me. He seemed in a hurry. But that doesn't really matter. I shall stay here with you until he comes back," Nicola assured the child with casual matter-of-factness. "Tell me your name."

"Belinda. Belinda Braydon. What's yours?"

"Nicola. Nicola Martin. And I'm on a motoring holiday. But it looks as though I'm going to spend my first night here. So, as soon as you've finished your supper, I vote we both go to sleep."

"Are you going to sleep here—in this room?"

"Yes. I think that big chair looks comfortable."

She didn't. But even the company of Belinda made her feel more normal and reassured. Not for the world would Nicola have spent the rest of this night either in one of the other silent dusty rooms, or downstairs with the equally silent girl in the little parlour.

"There's plenty of room on the bed," Belinda said hospitably. And Nicola realised, with some relief, that at least she had been accepted.

"All right, dear. I dare say I'll lie down presently."

Belinda, who evidently, like most children, had a curious talent for taking life as it came, seemed satisfied with this. She allowed Nicola to tuck her in, then she settled down, with her small body relaxed and her dark head turned away from Nicola and the light, in a pose heart-breakingly reminiscent of the girl downstairs. Five minutes later her even breathing showed that she was asleep.

Nicola shaded the light as well as she could from the bed. Though she scolded herself for a coward, nothing would have induced her to put out the lamp. And presently she went over quietly and, finding to her relief that there was a key in the lock, she softly closed the door and locked it.

Then, feeling her nerves relax for the first time in an hour, she sat down in the chair by the window and looked out.

A pale moon, half smothered in clouds, made a fitful appearance from time to time. It gave sufficient light to show a general impression of the scene outside, but the trees and shrubs which grew so close to the house impeded anything in the nature of a wide view.

Nicola softly opened the window and sat there—wrapped in the coat which she had not taken off—and listened to the faint, indistinct sounds of the countryside which came to her. But, though it seemed to her that she listened for hours, there was never any sound of an approaching car bringing a doctor or anyone else to the silent house.

She was never sure afterwards at which point she fell asleep. Sometimes she thought that she must have kept a long and anxious vigil, but at others she believed that weariness and her exhausted nerves overcame her pretty quickly. At any rate, she awoke suddenly to the realisation that she was stiff, that light was streaking a pale, silvery sky, and that the lamp had gone out.

At first, as recollection crowded back on her, she felt her heart beat furiously. But almost immediately she remembered the child, and the urgent necessity of keeping her head and doing nothing to communicate her own nervous state to Belinda.

Cold and cramped, she went over to the bed and, taking care not to disturb the sleeping child, lay down and drew the eiderdown over her.

Immediately Belinda turned and snuggled against her with a puppy-like movement of affection and trust, so out of keeping with her rather self-possessed reactions when awake, that Nicola felt her heart warm afresh in pity and tenderness for the child.

Slipping her arm round Belinda, she drew the firm, rounded little figure against her. Then, warmed physically by the contact, and mentally by the childish trust given her, Nicola slept again, this time more restfully.

When Nicola woke again it was broad daylight. Birds were singing outside the window in cheerful chorus, and Belinda was sitting up in bed, blinking her dark eyes at the sunlight which was pouring into the room.

The whole scene was so bright and normal and different from the melancholy character of the previous evening that, for a moment, Nicola almost thought she must have dreamed her tragic discovery in the room downstairs.

But, with completely returning consciousness, came also the urgent realisation that she must tackle the situation and somehow keep Belinda ignorant of what had happened.

Even as she thought this, the little girl remarked:

"I wonder if Mummie is awake. I'll go down and see."

"No!" Nicola was off the bed in a moment, with a speed which obviously surprised her young companion. "You— you'd better not run about in your pyjamas. You get dressed, like a good girl, and I'll go down and—and see about your mother and some—some breakfast."

"All right." Belinda was evidently used to pretty, ready obedience. "I'll be as quick as I can. Can I have a bath?"

"There won't be any hot water, I expect." Nicola prayed that at least there would be a bathroom upstairs, and that she would not have the child pattering down behind her to wash in the scullery. "Better manage with a wash this morning."

"And my teeth," Belinda said rather virtuously.

"Yes. And your teeth, of course," Nicola agreed absently. And then, having ascertained that there was a small, rather makeshift bathroom upstairs, she forced herself to run down with a light, carefree tread. '

She went into the parlour. What else could she do? Belinda might very likely be listening to hear if she could detect a word or two from her mother, and would know in a moment if Nicola went straight to the kitchen.

Casement blinds were drawn across the window from the night before, and the sunlight filtered through in a subdued golden light. The room looked very peaceful and not unfriendly. Nothing sinister about it now. Just a cottage room where a girl had died. One might imagine that a loving hand had drawn the blind against the outside world and that presently her family would come to say their last good-byes to her.

Suddenly tears almost blinded Nicola, so that she had to grope for the handbag which she had left there the previous night. Then, softly, she withdrew from the room and, taking the key from this door, too, she locked it quietly behind her and pocketed the key.

"Is she awake?" Belinda had come to the head of the stairs, and spoke now in a loud whisper.

Nicola racked her brain for some confident story that would cover the facts, even for an hour or two, until she could decide how this child must be told.

"There was a—note," she said slowly. "Your mother wasn't at all well, Belinda. Your fa ‑ The man who brought you here in his car came back with a doctor last night, and they took your mother to hospital. It was the only thing to do."

"Why didn't he wake me and tell me?"

Gone was the docile and readily obedient child. Belinda's black brows drew together in a sudden scowl.

"He evidently thought it best not to wake either of us."

"Where is my mummie?" Belinda demanded belligerently. "He had no right to take her without telling me."

"I don't know exactly where she is." Nicola came slowly up the stairs, and, sitting down on the top step, put her arm round the child. "Belinda, have you any other relations?"

"Why?"

The monosyllable was unchildlike in its curtness and suspicion.

"Because," Nicola pointed out mildly, "it will be best for you to stay with them until—while your mother ‑"

"I don't want to stay with them. I'll stay with you."

Nicola laughed and bit her lip, secretly touched by the sulky but flattering determination of that.

"Darling, I don't think your relations would like that."

"Well, I don't like them, and I'm not going to stay with them. And I'm not going to tell you where they are, so you can't send me there."

And, having said this, Belinda marched back into the bathroom, from whence the sound, of vigorous teeth-scrubbing almost immediately issued.

Nicola went downstairs again, and rather deliberately concentrated on getting some breakfast together.

It was difficult to see what she should do next about the child. From all points of view, it seemed the first essential was to get in touch with the nearest police-station. She would have to report the death of Belinda's mother and the events of the previous evening, and she would have to have the little girl identified and handed over to some care other than her own.

Well, the only course was to fake each development quietly and sensibly as it came along, and try to feel inwardly some of the outward, matter-of-fact calm which she must maintain for Belinda's benefit.

Presently Nicola had a rather modest breakfast spread out on the kitchen table, and by that time Belinda had come down and displayed great interest.

"Are we going to live here?" she inquired, with all the air of one who was willing to make the best of a desert island, so long as she had good company.

Nicola shook her head and smiled.

"We can't very well camp out in someone else's house," she pointed out.

"But it's my fa ‑ It's that man's house, isn't it? We can stay here until he comes back," Belinda said.

Nicola concealed her surprise at this fresh piece of information, which hardly seemed to fit in with anything else.

"There aren't any real arrangements for us," she replied reasonably. "As soon as we've finished breakfast, you and I are going to take my car and drive into the nearest village."

"Oh, goodie!" Belinda was prepared to enjoy what she evidently saw as the beginning of a vagabond life. "And what do we do then?"

Nicola wished she really knew the answer to that. But, with no sign of hesitation, she said:

"Well, the first thing will be to make some inquiries—about your mother."

"Oh, yes." Belinda's brightness clouded over for a moment.

But she recovered, with all the resilience of ten years. "And when we've found out where she is, and made sure she's all right in hospital, can you and I drive round in your car—just as you said you meant to do, anyway?"

"Take a motor tour together?" Nicola smiled. "I doubt if we can manage that. But we'll see."

When they had finished breakfast and washed up—Belinda assisted willingly and energetically with the drying—they repacked the little girl's suitcase and prepared to leave the house.

At the last minute Nicola was afflicted with a nervous dread lest, even now, Belinda might suspect that something was wrong. She hurried the little girl across to the car, profoundly thankful to remember that the parlour curtains were drawn.

As it was, Belinda looked back interestedly at the house, and said:

"Oh, we've left those blinds drawn."

"Never mind." Nikola pretended to be busy with the luggage. "Jump in, dear. It's time we were off."

Belinda got into the car, and a moment later Nicola followed her. She fumbled nervously with the controls, but at last there was the welcome sound of the motor starting into life. Nicola backed the car and turned it. And then, with an immensity of relief unlike anything she had ever known in her life before, she was driving away from the cottage where she had had such incredible experiences, back to the world of blessed normality.

For the first time for ages, it seemed to her, her mind reached out again beyond the limits of the recent harrowing events, and she could see herself once more as an ordinary, normal girl, to whom nothing much happened, beyond the usual experiences of life as a reasonably successful secretary.

At twenty-three Nicola was not without knowledge and experience of the world, and the fact that she had lost her parents at the comparatively early age of fifteen and had to fend for herself had made her self-reliant and practical. Until she was twenty she had lived with her married—and much older—brother. But, although she was extremely fond of him and his wife, the house had been none too big for them and their growing family, so that neither she nor they had been sorry when circumstances had enabled her to set up in a little place of her own.

As the secretary and receptionist to a West End specialist, Nicola had made enough to maintain a small flat in one of the northern suburbs of London. But during the last month her employer had retired, and Nicola had promised herself that, if her search for new employment after her short holiday resulted in any good, offer outside London, she would be prepared to take it.

All this had been within the scope of any normal life, and, like thousands of others, Nicola had never seriously expected to move far outside this accepted pattern.

She was perhaps a little more venturesome than most, a little more eager for experience and novelty. But, certainly, in her most fantastic imaginings she had never seen herself as a figure in a drama of this sort. And, she thought ruefully, it was not an experience she would have courted, if she had known.

The moment that thought was formed, however, she glanced at the small figure sitting beside her, and her heart misgave her, and she thought remorsefully:

"But I would not have wished to miss knowing Belinda."

Not that Belinda was a pretty, or even an immediately engaging child. But, for her age, she was a peculiarly complete personality. Not aggressive, but clearly defined. Not exactly pathetic, but with a sudden and unexpected power to touch the heart-strings.

"If it were not exaggerating, I should say I love her already," Nicola thought. And, as though in answer to that, Belinda spoke at last.

"I wish I could stay with you, Nicola," she said. "Until Mummie is well, I mean. It'd be much nicer than going to Gran ‑to anyone else."

"I don't quite see how it could be managed, my dear," Nicola said frankly. "But I think I can promise one thing, and that is that you and I will be friends in the future."

"D'you mean you'll live near Elm Court, and see me often?"

"Where," asked Nicola casually, "is Elm Court?"

But Belinda suddenly curled up in her shell again, and just said sulkily:

"It doesn't matter. I'm not going to tell you."

Nicola refrained from pressing her. It ought not to be impossibly difficult for the police to trace her people, without badgering the child and making her suspicious.

So, after that, Nicola talked of other things, pointing out what she thought might interest Belinda, and being rewarded by an eager and intelligent response on the little girl's part.

At last they reached the hamlet which Nicola had rejected as a stopping-place the night before. And here they were able to replenish Nicola's alarmingly low stock of petrol.

Although it was not necessary, Nicola made it her business to get out of the car to pay the man, and she walked with him out of earshot of Belinda.

"Do you know anywhere near here called Elm Court?" she inquired.

"Elm Court?" The man pushed back his cap and scratched his head. "Can't say I do. Is it a house or a place?"

"A house, I imagine."

"What's the name of the people there?"

"I don't know. It could be Braydon, but I don't think so."

At the astonished look on the man's face, Nicola realised how peculiar her words must sound.

"Never heard of Elm Court. Never heard of Braydon," the man said. And, with a sigh, Nicola realised that they were going to have to cast a wider net to find Belinda's family.

She tried to make her next query sound casual, but, to her annoyance, she looked a little self-conscious as she said:

"Where is the nearest police-station?"

"P'lice-station?" The man took a step or two away from her.

"I thought they might be able to tell me there," she amplified hastily.

"Oh ‑'' He eyed her with obvious suspicion and disapproval. "Turn left when you get out of the village and drive on a matter of two or three miles. You'll come to a village. Name of Fennell Thorpe. There's a p'lice-station there. But I doubt they won't be able to tell you much."

"Thank you," Nicola said, and returned to the car, aware that the man turned and gazed after her thoughtfully and without favour.

"Do you know this part of the country at all, Belinda?" Nicola asked once.

But Belinda said "No." And, on the whole, Nicola thought that was true. The man—her father or another—must have brought them a good way before he stopped at the cottage where her mother had died.

Fennell Thorpe was found without difficulty, and Nicola drove rather slowly along the main street, looking for the police-station. There were several people abroad, evidently doing their morning shopping, and one or two cars—including a big black Daimler standing outside the Little square police-station itself—were parked among farm trucks, a wagon or two and a sprinkling of bicycles.

Nicola drew up at the kerb and, as she got out, said to Belinda:

"Wait here for a few minutes, dear. I shan't be long."

"What are you going to do? That's a police-station. It says so on the stone over the door," stated Belinda, who missed little.

"I'm going in to ask about your mother," Nicola told her in a matter-of-fact tone.

"Then I'm coming, too." Belinda prepared to get out of the car and join Nicola on the pavement.

"I don't want you to come, Belinda." Nicola infused all the authority she could into her tone, but this time without effect.

"I'm coming, too." Belinda repeated, as though Nicola had not spoken.

Instinctively Nicola put out her hand to stop the child. And, as she did so, someone came up behind her from the building, caught her arm in a not very gentle grip, and exclaimed in a tone of angry authority:

"What are you doing with that child?"

After all that had happened Nicola would not have been very much surprised to find herself literally in the hands of the law, on a charge of ill-treating Belinda in the open street.

But, when she turned to answer her questioner, she saw it was no policeman who had her by the arm. It was a tall, imperious, unfriendly-looking man, who seemed oddly familiar, though she could not at the moment think why.

"Doing with her?" Nicola began angrily. But Belinda interrupted in a tone of disgusted resignation.

"Hallo, Uncle Vaughan," she said, with a scowl. "You needn't be cross with Nicola. She's been very kind and looked after me. And I'd like to stay with her, instead of coming back to you and Grandma."

CHAPTER II

because of her private knowledge of Belinda's position, Nicola was feeling specially tender towards the child. She was furiously indignant therefore when the little girl's uncle merely threw her a disapproving glance and said:

"Don't be ridiculous."

Then he turned to Nicola and, in much the same tone, added:

"I should like a few words with you. Preferably inside the police-station."

Nicola, though naturally sweet-tempered, was not one to be bullied. With a quick movement she released her arm. Then she said, coldly and at least as curtly as the man had addressed her:

"I am going into the police-station to—report one or two things. If you care to come in, you can hear them."

Then she marched up the short, flagged path, completely disregarding the look of dislike and suspicion which he had bestowed upon her.

He said nothing more to Nicola but, as he followed her up the path, she heard him say to Belinda:

"Where is your mother?"

"In hospital," Belinda said sulkily.

"In hospital?" His voice was suddenly sharp with anxiety. "Why? What has happened?"

"I don't know. Nicola knows."

The man muttered something. But Nicola refused to turn her head. Instead she went on, through the first open door which presented itself, and found herself in a barely furnished office, where a large, pleasant police sergeant was sitting, writing.

He looked up at her, and then past her, to exclaim:

"Back again, Mr. Colwell? Don't tell me you've found them."

"Only the little girl. But this—lady has something to tell you, I think."

"Take a seat, miss." The sergeant indicated an office chair hospitably. Even if Belinda's arrogant uncle did suspect her of kidnapping, Nicola thought, the sergeant at least was following the immemorial tradition of the law and assuming her innocent until proved otherwise.

Instead of sitting down immediately, she addressed the sergeant in a low voice.

"I'd rather say what I have to say without the little girl here. I noticed there was a house attached to the station. Could someone keep an eye on her for ten minutes?"

Fortunately Belinda, intent on answering some query of her uncle's, did not apparently catch what was said. And, still more fortunately, the sergeant proved to be a quick-thinking, if slow-moving, man. He got up ponderously, summoned another, much younger policeman and told him to take Belinda across to "the quarters".

"My wife'll give you a glass of milk and some cake," he told Belinda, a reassuring smile spreading all over his large face. "And if you're a good girl you can have a look at our cat and her new kittens."

It was not in Belinda—or, indeed, any little girl of ten—to resist such a list of attractions. She put her hand into that of the younger policeman at once, and went away with him.

The man who had been addressed as Mr. Colwell watched all this with scarcely concealed impatience.

"What's all this elaborate nonsense?" he asked sharply. "It looks to me as though you're deliberately delaying any inquiry."

"No," Nicola replied coldly. "I'm merely ensuring that Belinda should not be here when I have to say that her mother is dead."

It was only when the man went quite white under his tan that Nicola was recalled to the fact that he was possibly the dead woman's brother.

"I'm most terribly sorry!" she exclaimed, and she actually put her hand on his arm, though he shook that off. "I—I forgot you were probably related to her."

"She's—she was my sister." He flinched a little at the sudden necessity of changing that tense. Then he recovered his self-control and added harshly, "What happened?"

As clearly and as briefly as possible Nicola recounted what had happened the previous evening, neither the sergeant nor Vaughan Colwell making any attempt to interrupt her.

"Where is this cottage, miss?" asked the sergeant at the end, at the same time as Vaughan Colwell said, as though he had to drive himself to say it:

"Did she look—was there any sign of violence?"

"None at all. She looked as though she had just fallen asleep," Nicola said gently. And for a long moment there was silence in the office. Then she added, "Belinda spoke about her mother having fallen asleep in the car, and not waking when her fa ‑when she was lifted out. Is it possible that she—just collapsed?"

"Quite possible." Vaughan Colwell rubbed his hand rather wearily over his forehead. "Her heart was weak. We had been warned recently that she must not have any excitement, That was one reason why ‑"

He stopped, looked at Nicola as though he were surprised that she had induced him to say so much, and then turned to the sergeant.

"I'd better come with you to the cottage."

"Yes, sir. And I'll get hold of the doctor and another man. Perhaps this young lady ‑"

"Do I have to come, too?" Nicola obviously hoped not, while being prepared to do so if necessary.

"No, miss. I don't think we need ask you to do that," the sergeant told her. "I was going to say that perhaps you'd stay with the little girl."

"Why, of course!"

"And I'm afraid you'll be needed for the inquest."

"All right." With a flicker of disappointment she mentally relinquished most of the rest of her motor trip. But then, she reminded herself, she would not, even if officially allowed to do so, have wished to leave Belinda like this, without knowing something more of the child's ultimate fate.

"I'll take you over to see my wife, miss."

The sergeant seemed confident that he could unload all his extra troubles on to his wife. And, with a backward glance at Vaughan Colwell, who now seemed sunk in thought and quite indifferent about her departure, Nicola accompanied her guide out of the building, across a lovely little Square flower garden, and into what was obviously "the quarters".

Mrs. James, the sergeant's wife, proved to be quite as large and benevolent and resourceful as her husband. She already had Belinda sitting in a low chair in the kitchen, beside a basket full of fascinating, mewing fluff. And, on being given to understand that Nicola, too, was to become her concern for the morning, she said hospitably:

"Sit you down, my dear, and I'll make you some cocoa."

Nicola was not sure whether Mrs. James and her husband had a private sign language, or whether her kind hostess had somehow been given to understand that she and Belinda had been through a trying experience. At any rate, she, as well as Belinda, was treated rather like a valued convalescent. And, after having had to be so very self-reliant and courageous and resourceful during the last eighteen hours or so, Nicola found the experience exceedingly acceptable.

With Belinda she crouched down to stroke the mother cat and admire the kittens, as though they neither of them had a care beyond this simple enjoyment. And presently, when they heard a cat drive away, she managed to restrain herself, and not even glance out of the window.

Belinda, however, looked up.

"Is that Uncle Vaughan going away?" she inquired hopefully.

"He had to go to see about something. But he'll be coming back later," Nicola felt bound to say.

Belinda frowned.

"Have I got to go back and live with him and Grandma?"

"I don't really know, dear. But why don't you want to?"

"I don't like either of them." Belinda set her mouth mutinously. "Only Uncle Algy."

"Oh—have you another uncle?"

"Yes, of course. But he's not often at Elm Court. When he does come, though, he's nice. He laughs and plays with me, and makes fun of Uncle Vaughan."

Nicola began to feel that she could visualise something of the set-up at Elm Court.

"And—your mother lived there with you?" she asked cautiously, because Mrs. James had gone into the back kitchen now to attend to her morning tasks, and the two were alone together.

"Oh, yes, of course."

"But not—the man who was described as your father?"

"No, no. He only came a few days ago. And Grandma didn't like him and nor did Uncle Vaughan. Only Grandma hid it a bit and Uncle Vaughan didn't."

"No," thought Nicola. "Uncle Vaughan wouldn't, from what I've seen of him."

But aloud she said "And what happened then?" because Belinda was showing a tendency to become absorbed in the kittens again, and she was afraid she was going to miss this one chance of understanding at least something of the family mystery into which she had so unexpectedly stumbled.

"Oh, well, there was a row, I think. But that was after I'd gone to bed last night. No, the night before. I heard the man talking very loudly, and Uncle Vaughan speaking in his nice-nasty voice, and I think Mummie cried. Then afterwards she came upstairs and asked if I was awake. And, at first, I pretended to be asleep, but then I heard she was crying again, so I pretended to wake up and said—what was the matter? And she said that man was my daddy, and would I like us to go and live with him? And I said 'No'. So then she said— well, she wanted to, and wouldn't I come too? But to say nothing to anyone else about it. So I said all right, and then I went to sleep again. Look, the ginger kitten's gone to sleep too, Nicola."

"Yes, it's sweet." Nicola gave the sleeping kitten an absent stroke. "What happened the next day, Belinda?"

"Nothing happened at first. Only Mummie stayed in bed in the morning and said she wasn't well. And then in the afternoon, when Grandma was having her nap, Mummie suddenly came into my playroom, all dressed to go out, and said we must go. And she made me put on my best coat, and then told me to come very quietly, and we went downstairs and out of the house. And the man was waiting in the car. Not in front of the house, but round at the side, which was silly, because we had to carry the luggage all round there, and Mummie had to put down the case several times because it was so heavy. But he came and helped us when he saw us coming. And then we drove away."

"Where," asked Nicola irresistibly, "was your Uncle Vaughan all this time?"

"Oh, he must have been out somewhere. Or else he wouldn't have let us go, you know."

"I see. And did you drive a long way?"

"I think so. I fell asleep after a bit, because it was hot in the back of the car. And when I woke up it wasn't afternoon any more, and Mummie had gone to sleep. And she never woke up, not even when we got to the house."

Nicola bit her lip at the pathetic and unconscious truth of this. But she kept her tone completely matter-of-fact and calm.

"Well, my dear, I don't see anything for it at the moment, but for you to go back to Elm Court. You've lived there most of your life, I take it?"

"Oh, yes." Like most children, Belinda seemed surprised that Nicola didn't, by instinct, know all the elementary things about her.

"And, on the whole, you've been happy there, I expect?"

''Ye-es. But I'd be happier with you,'' Belinda stated firmly.

Nicola laughed.

"Darling, I haven't anywhere suitable for a little girl to enjoy any sort of family life. I live on my own in a couple of rooms, and ‑"

"Oh, that'd be lovely," Belinda declared. "I'd like that." And she looked rather reproachful when Nicola laughed again and shook her head.

"Then I wish you'd come and live at Elm Court," she said, scowling a little. "I don't want to go there without Mummie or anyone."

Nicola was at a loss to know what to say in answer to that. But fortunately the prettiest of the kittens uncurled himself just then and stretched and licked languidly at Belinda's hand, which was gripping the edge of the basket. Her attention was thus pleasantly distracted, and a few minutes later Mrs. James came back into the room and asked if Belinda would like to go down the garden and pick some raspberries for herself.

Belinda responded to this invitation with alacrity, and suggested that Nicola should come with her. But, by a slight shake of her head, Mrs. James managed to indicate that she would like a few words with Nicola on her own.

So Belinda was provided with a small basket, and told that Nicola would join her presently. And a moment later she was skipping down the garden path in search of further pleasant experiences.

Mrs. James stood at the window and watched her go. Then she turned to Nicola with a shake of her head.

"Poor little lass. She's just lost her mother, I hear."

"She doesn't know about it yet," Nicola said quickly, wondering how Mrs. James had managed to do so.

"No. So they told me at the station. It will have been a shock for poor Mr. Colwell."

"Yes. I'm afraid I told him without much preparation. I forgot that he was probably her brother."

"Ah ‑" Mrs. James heaved a gusty sigh of sympathy.

"And a good brother too. He thought the light shone out of her."

"Oh, do you know the family?" Nicola asked in surprise. "I thought they lived a long way from here."

"Fifty or sixty miles," Mrs. James said. "But we used to be stationed at Derrymuir, which is the nearest village to Elm Court, so we knew all about the people at the big house. We were there when she married this Braydon. He was no good. I said so to my husband from the beginning. 'Mark my words, Tom,' I said, 'he'll be no good to her.' And no good he was. She was back home, poor young thing, within a year. And yet—I don't know—they say she pined for him, just the same. My cousin, Lil, she works in the laundry at Derrymuir. She was over here only last Easter and she was saying to me, 'Doris,' she said, 'if you ask me, poor Miss Ginette, she's still fretting after that husband of hers.'"

"There's another brother, isn't there?" By now, Nicola was thoroughly interested in the whole family. "Besides this Mr. Colwell, I mean."

"Oh, yes, to be sure." A smile broke over Mrs. James's broad face. "There's Mr. Algernon. He's a nice fellow, if ever there was one. Rather too much of a one for the girls, I don't doubt, but such a handsome fellow, you can't wonder they run after him. Everyone likes Mr. Algernon. Except," she added thoughtfully, "his brother, perhaps."

And then she seemed to realise that she had touched the fringe of indiscretion. So she asked if Nicola could fancy a nice bit of fish for her lunch, in order to change the subject.

Nicola said that indeed she could, but that there was no reason for her to impose on Mrs. James to that extent. Both she and Belinda could no doubt find somewhere in the village where they could lunch.

"Indeed you will not," Mrs. James assured her with energy. "My Tom told me to look after you till he came back. And look after you I will."

Nicola wondered a little uncomfortably, in her ignorance, if kind Mrs. James were a sort of benevolent extension of the law, and whether this lunch invitation were one of pure hospitality or principally a means of keeping a star witness and even possible suspect under observation. In any case, it was difficult to do anything but accept. So accept she did, and then went out into the garden to rejoin Belinda.

The little girl was some way down the garden absorbed in her task, and as Nicola slowly made her way towards her, she turned over in her mind the information she had so recently gleaned, first from Belinda herself and now from the pleasantly gossipy Mrs. James.

It was easy now, she thought, to see how most of the story fell into place. The delicate indulged daughter. The unsuitable match—probably very unpopular with her family. Then the return home and the reabsorption into the original setting. The strict but devoted mother and brother once more, but the delicate, indulged daughter now secretly hankering after her worthless—but, perhaps refreshingly easy-going—husband.

There must have been all sorts of recriminations and objections when he turned up again. But evidently his charm was still irresistible to the girl. Poor "Miss Ginette"! Wanting her worthless husband, yet quite unable to oppose any real argument to the objections raised by her family. Rather than argue it out further with them, she had just slipped away with him again.

Nicola could see her in imagination—delicate yet determined, struggling with that heavy suitcase, and possibly imposing even then the last, too strenuous burden on her already weak heart. That and the prolonged excitement and strife of the previous few days had been too much for her. In the very act of bidding for a freedom which would almost certainly have proved as disillusioning as before, she had slipped away, not only from home but from life.

Poor girl. Nicola sighed. Maybe she had suffered less that way. No one seemed to feel she could have been either happy or secure with the man she could not resist following.

In any case, for good or ill, her story had been told. There remained her sturdy, determined, and yet curiously pathetic daughter. The little girl who kept on making her appeal to Nicola, both literally and figuratively.

"I can't, of course, assume any real responsibility for the child," thought Nicola, watching an unconscious Belinda pick raspberries with tremendous concentration. "But I can't— abandon her either."

She knew that "abandon" was an absurd word to use in connection with a child who was obviously well looked after in every material respect, and who—if bereft of parents—certainly had other close relations to see after her welfare. But, in spite of the evident advantages of her position, Nicola could not help feeling that Belinda was going to need someone with a little more sympathy and understanding than Uncle Vaughan, for instance.

Nicola had too much common sense to subscribe to all the modern jargon about "frustration" and "inhibitions" and so. forth. She knew perfectly well that, given certain fundamental securities, most children can be happy in most circumstances. But Belinda's were rather unusual circumstances, and she could foresee a difficult period for the child when she finally knew that her mother was gone and that her future was in the hands of relations for whom—justifiably or not—she had some aversion.

Nicola had just reached this point in her reflections when Belinda, arriving at the end of a row of canes, looked up and waved to her.

"Look! I've nearly filled the basket."

"That's fine." Nicola joined her, and together they finished the task. But, on Belinda's side at least, there was very little conversation.

The reason for this soon became plain. As Nicola would have returned to the house with the basket, Belinda said:

"Nicola, I've been thinking ‑"

With a slight qualm of uneasiness Nicola turned to her again.

"About what, dear?"

"About Mummie." Looking very thoughtful, Belinda sat down on the small patch of grass, and, after a moment, Nicola joined her.

"Is she very ill?" Belinda brushed her hand lightly to and fro over the blades of grass.

"I think it's pretty serious," Nicola said, feeling this was perhaps an opportunity to prepare the child a little.

"Is she going to die?"

Nicola had not anticipated anything so direct, and for a moment she hesitated. Then she said:

"That isn't a question I could answer, Belinda. Only doctors can answer that sort of question. Why did you ask it, my dear?"

"Because," Belinda said slowly, "I think she is dead— now."

Nicola passed the tip of her tongue over suddenly dry lips. She made no falsely cheerful protestations to the child. It was impossible to do so.

"Do you mean you think you have some sort of—premonition?" The word was obviously—and rather naturally—• unknown to Belinda, and, seeing her frown, Nicola tried again. "Do you mean you have some real reason for thinking that, Belinda? Or is it just a feeling you have?"

"It's mostly a feeling." The little girl was pale now—paler than Nicola had seen her so far, and her eyes looked big and dark with a curiously "far-away" expression in them. "But it isn't a sudden feeling just now, Nicola. It's a funny, empty feeling, and I had it last night and all the time I've been with you, only I didn't think about it too much because you were there. Then when I was alone' in the garden, I began to think about it ‑"

She stopped, and Nicola put an arm round her, not attempting to hurry what she was saying, nor yet to stop the words for which the child was obviously groping.

"Everything's been so strange since we left home yesterday afternoon," Belinda said slowly at last. "Why should Mummie go to sleep like that? And the man go away, and then come back and take her away? She wouldn't have gone without me if she—knew what he was doing. Nicola"—the child turned to her suddenly—"do you think she is—dead?"

Nicola, both moved and dismayed by this scene—more so than she would have been if Belinda had cried and shown more childish signs of grief—bit her lip. She wished desperately that she could know what attitude the family meant to take. If Belinda were to be told soon, then she herself would rather do the telling. But they might hold that it was better for a long, unexplained absence of her mother to merge gently and gradually into the child's acceptance of the fact that she was not coming back at all.

"Belinda, I don't know the exact truth," she said reluctantly. "It's possible that your uncle will know more when he comes back. Please be patient until then."

"I don't want Uncle Vaughan," Belinda declared, and began to cry and look much more like the child she was. "I want y-you to t-tell me, if anything's wrong."

"I shall tell you," Nicola promised.

"And M-mummie always said that if anything h-happened to her, she didn't want me to stay with G-grandma."

Nicola silently deplored the idea that anyone—even a sick unhappy girl—should ever have introduced the idea of anything "happening to her" into the mind of a ten-year-old. No wonder Belinda had been in a state to imagine—and interpret —the worst.

"My dear," she said firmly, "try not to make yourself unhappy imagining things which may never happen. I just don't know what plans your family have for you, but I'll willingly stay and talk them over with you and explain them, and try to see that your grandmother and uncle settle on something you will like."

"D'you mean that you'll stay at Elm Court?" Belinda raised a tear-smeared face and looked hopeful.

"Darling, I can't just invite myself there." Nicola gave a reluctant little laugh.

"But, if anything's—happened, will you stay for a few days?" Belinda begged urgently. "Will you promise to ask Uncle Vaughan if you can?"

"Very well," Nicola said, wondering to what she was committing herself. "I promise."

And then Mrs. James called that dinner was nearly ready, and they went into the house, to wash and make themselves presentable.

By the time they came to the table Nicola was glad to see that the tear stains on Belinda's face were removed, and, except for an air of anxious solemnity about her, she looked very much herself.

The next crisis, Nicola resignedly supposed, would be when her uncle returned and she insisted on knowing everything, before Nicola herself could have any word with Vaughan Colwell.

This, however, proved to be an unfounded piece of anxiety on Nicola's part. Because, almost immediately after dinner, Belinda—emotionally worn out and no doubt still suffering from her disturbed night—showed signs of extreme sleepiness, and,, on Mrs. James's firm insistence, she agreed to go upstairs and have a nap.

Nicola was alone, therefore, in Mrs. James's neat parlour when Vaughan Colwell and Sergeant James returned. The former came in alone to see her, and, when Nicola noticed how drawn and weary he looked, her heart smote her, and she was glad that kind Mrs. James followed almost immediately with sandwiches and a pot of strong tea on a tray.

She said, "Come along, sir. You can do with some of this," as though her rather intimidating visitor were a schoolboy. But though Vaughan Colwell nodded moodily and said "Thanks," he continued to stand by the window, staring out unseeingly into the gay, little flower garden, even after Mrs. James, with a "Tch, tch, tch", had withdrawn.

It was Nicola who poured out his tea and then said in a tone of quiet authority that she might have used to Belinda:

"Your tea is ready. Come and have it before it gets cold."

He came then, breaking off his meditations with a quick, sharp sigh. And he sat at the table and ate and drank what she put in front of him with obvious hunger, yet without paying much attention to what he was eating. He spoke only once, and that was to say in a hard, almost resentful voice:

"Twenty-nine is so terribly young to die."

"Was that all she was?" Nicola exclaimed, softly and pityingly. And he nodded and there was silence again.

When he had finished his meal he showed no disposition to get up and leave her, so Nicola decided that, for his sake as well as Belinda's, this might well be the best time to discuss future arrangements. To have something else to think of besides his immediate grief would not be a bad thing for him.

"Belinda is having a. nap," she began noncommittally. "I think she was pretty tired after her disturbed night."

He roused himself.

"Yes, of course. I forgot to ask where she was. How is she?"

"She is all right in herself. But she's beginning to sense that something is being kept from her, I'm afraid."

"Oh, she'll take things in her stride. Children always do," he said absently—even a little impatiently, and it was obvious to Nicola that his niece was a minor matter to him compared with his beloved sister.

"No, Mr. Colwell," Nicola stated, kindly but quite firmly. "Not all children necessarily take things in their stride, as you put it. Belinda isn't exactly a sensitive child, but she is unusually perceptive. She asked me outright if I thought her mother were dead."

He winced slightly again at this oblique reference to his loss, but he did bring his reluctant attention to the problem of his niece.

"What gave her that idea? I thought you'd taken rather elaborate precautions to keep her in ignorance of what had happened."

"I had," Nicola agreed. "But she is not an easy child to hoodwink. And I am inclined to think that she will suffer less if she is told the truth now." He made a slight gesture of dissent, but Nicola went on determinedly. "I doubt if you could put her off for long. Certainly not long enough to dull her sense of loss to any degree. And, that being so, I think I should be frank with her, if I were you, and save her from what might be a period of quite agonising doubt and suspicion."

He passed his hand over his hair perplexedly.

"I can't say it's a task I'm anxious for at the moment," he said grimly.

"Oh, no!" Her tone of protest showed that she had not expected him to take a personal hand. "You aren't quite—I mean, it's better perhaps that a woman should tell her. I'll tell her if you wish me to."

He looked at Nicola then as though, in some way, he took real notice of her for the first time.

"It's very kind of you. I don't know why you should burden yourself with our troubles, Miss ‑"

"Miss Martin," she reminded him.

"Oh, yes—I'm sorry. Miss Martin. I think you said you were on some sort of holiday. This isn't a very good beginning for you."

She was surprised, and a little touched, that he should remember her mentioning her holiday in the first account she had given to him and the police sergeant, and some warmth and cordiality crept into her tone as she said:

"Please don't bother about that. It isn't so important. And I'll willingly take on the task of—telling Belinda, if you like. We have established rather—rather friendly relations already and, if I may say so, I think she might not take it so hard from me."

"I dare say you're right. Thank you. I'd be glad if you'd undertake the job. Also if you could resign her to the idea of coming back to Elm Court ‑" He broke off and bit his lip rather vexedly, as though a fresh and unpleasing prospect presented itself. "It's not going to be easy with a grief-stricken and resentful child around the place in the next few days. My mother is an elderly woman, of course, and rather— delicate ‑"

He broke off again, and Nicola had the inner conviction that "difficult" was the word rather than "delicate", which had first come to him. And on an impulse of helpfulness—as much on his behalf as Belinda's perhaps—she finally resigned the rest of her holiday, and said:

"There's something I was going to suggest, and what you have just said makes it easier. Please don't think I'm issuing a self-invitation, but it might be easier for all of you if I accompanied you and Belinda to Elm Court. She has pressed me several times not to leave her until her mother returns. If you could see your way ‑"

"Why, of course!" he interrupted her, with more enthusiasm than she had seen him display over anything yet. "Of course, if you would be so kind, it would be an ideal solution. I—my mother and I—would be most grateful."

"Then that's settled," Nicola said in as matter-of-fact a tone as possible, because she felt certain that this man disliked anything in the nature of an emotional scene—even the necessity of expressing profound gratitude.

And then she went upstairs to wake Belinda, wondering as she did so to what complicated situation she had committed herself.

CHAPTER III

"that's elm court—that big place with the pillars in front. The road curves round in a minute, and you lose sight of the house, but we shall be there in about ten minutes."

Belinda sighed, as though the prospect pleased her little, but these were the first words she had volunteered during the last hour, and Nicola felt it was something to have her speak on her own initiative at all.

Telling the child of her loss had been as harrowing an experience as Nicola had expected, but at least there had been no hysterical display. Indeed, Belinda's self-control had been more trying than a scene would have been, and Nicola had hurried on to the earnest assurance that she herself would accompany the child home and stay with her for a while.

Belinda had shed a few tears of something like relief then, and even roused enough interest to ask with gloomy curiosity: "How did you make Uncle Vaughan agree?"

"He seemed only too willing to make any arrangement which would help you," Nicola had said, feeling this to be a suitable moment for improving Uncle Vaughan's record a little.

But Belinda had only looked sulky over that. And, when she had finally come downstairs with Nicola, ready to depart, the sole words she addressed to her uncle were: "I want to go with Nicola in her car." "Very well." Vaughan Colwell had raised no difficulty over that. But nor, Nicola noticed, did he achieve any expression of tenderness or display of affection towards his bereaved niece. He had merely turned to Nicola and said:

"I'll lead the way, if you just follow my car. It isn't more than forty-five or fifty miles."

And so she had followed the big black Daimler for more than an hour now, up and down the Cumbrian hills, until at last Belinda had broken the silence to say "That's Elm Court."

"It looks a very fine house from here," Nicola replied— more to say something about the place than because she had gathered anything but a fleeting impression of size and an imposing frontage.

"It's big," Belinda agreed in a disparaging tone.

"You'll have to show me over it tomorrow," Nicola said. "I've never stayed in such a big house before. I should like to see it."

"Very well."

No enthusiasm about that, so Nicola tried again.

"There must be lovely grounds, too, I imagine. The country around is so beautiful."

"Yes, the grounds are nice," Belinda conceded rather grudgingly. But, after a moment, she added with some show of interest, "We might have some picnics."

"Why, yes. That would be fun."

"If Grandma doesn't say no," the little girl qualified her suggestion pessimistically.

"I don't see why we should expect her to say no to anything as reasonable as that," Nicola insisted brightly, because she considered Belinda was inclined to luxuriate in gloom at the moment.

However, Belinda just said, "Grandma isn't reasonable," rather darkly. And, on this encouraging note, they turned in at the pillared entrance to a magnificent avenue of trees which led, as straight as a couple of ruled lines, to the impressive frontage of Elm Court. «

Vaughan Colwell had already leapt from his car by the time they arrived in front of the house, and as Nicola drew to a standstill he came to, open the door for her.

"I'm going to hand you over to Mrs. Dory, the housekeeper, right away," he explained. "Then, if you'll excuse me, I must go straight to my mother. There's a good deal I shall have to tell her."

"Yes, of course."

Holding Belinda rather tightly by the hand—partly in sympathy with the child's mood on returning home and partly because she herself felt faintly nervous—Nicola followed her host up the steps and into the house.

In a lofty, panelled, rather gloomy hall he handed her over to Mrs. Dory, who wore rustling black and folded her hands in front of her, exactly like a stage housekeeper.

"Miss Martin is a good friend of Miss Belinda," Vaughan Colwell explained. "Please look after her very well. You might give her the room next to Miss Belinda's."

"Yes, sir."

Mrs. Dory must have been dying to know more, Nicola could not help thinking, but years of discreet training seemed to have rendered her almost physically incapable of framing a question. And, as though the situation were the most ordinary in the world, she escorted Nicola and Belinda to a small, charming sitting-room overlooking a terraced garden at the back of the house, and here they were served with an admirable supper.

Even Belinda seemed able to do justice to food by now, but, when Mrs. Dory came in to see if they had all they wanted, she suddenly laid down her spoon and fork and said:

"Mrs. Dory, Mummie's dead."

Even the self-possessed housekeeper blenched before the sudden candour of this, but she collected herself sufficiently to say, as though she thought the rumour exaggerated:

"Oh, no. Miss Belinda. I don't think that can be right."

"But it is," Belinda insisted. And Nikola felt bound to add:

"I'm sorry you should have heard it like that, Mrs. Dory, but I'm afraid it is true."

The housekeeper's hand went to her mouth for a moment in a gesture of dismay, and she exclaimed under her breath:

"Poor Miss Ginette. They shouldn't have driven her so!"

Then, as though she could hardly credit her own indiscretion, she added:

"Not that it's for me to say anything, I'm sure, except that I'm most dreadfully sorry to hear the news."

"Yes. We're all very, very sorry about it. That's why I've come here to stay with Belinda for a little while," Nicola said. "She has had a tiring and difficult day. And, as soon as she has finished her supper, I think she had better go to bed."

"Why, yes, Miss Martin, of course." The housekeeper looked at the little girl with real concern and sympathy.

But Belinda exclaimed:

"Oh, I don't want to go to bed yet. I'm not sleepy. I slept nearly two hours this afternoon."

It was true, of course. And, anxious as she was that the child should be too tired to he .awake grieving when she did finally go to bed, Nicola said:

"Very well. Perhaps you and I will have a walk in the grounds first."

"Madam doesn't like ‑" began Mrs. Dory. Then some other reflection seemed to cut her remark short—perhaps the recollection that "madam" would have other things to occupy her mind that evening. "Maybe that would be best," she said. And then she went away, leaving Nicola and Belinda to their own devices.

It was very silent in the great house. Rather oppressively silent, Nicola could not help thinking. And, even when distant doors were heard to open and shut, they did so with a subdued sound suggestive of thick walls and deep-pile carpets and silent, efficient servants.

"Not a very enlivening place for the one child here," reflected Nicola. And more than ever she felt glad that she had accompanied Belinda home.

"We can go out this way if you like," Belinda announced when supper was over. And she opened one of the long glass doors which led straight on to the terrace.

Not at all averse to exploring the place further, Nicola came with her willingly, and, by common consent, they crossed the terrace and descended the two flights of ornamental steps, as though both aware that to walk along the terrace past other windows would be to invite the attention of "madam" and perhaps put an end to their expedition.

The grounds appeared to stretch as far as Nicola could see. At least, it was difficult to say where the parkland beyond the formal gardens merged into the general countryside.

"It's a wonderful place, Belinda!" Nicola exclaimed in all sincerity. And at that a less gloomy expression came over the little girl's face, and for the first time she seemed willing to lend an ear to the suggestion that there were compensations to life at Elm Court.

"If you could live here always ‑" she began.

But Nicola laughed that away before it could become a concrete expression of hope. For she was beginning to learn that this obstinate little girl was inclined to formulate what she wanted and then work ceaselessly to obtain it, even if she had to wring all hearts in order to do so.

"There's a little bit of Uncle Vaughan there," reflected Nicola amusedly.

Not that he was a natural heart-wringer. But he certainly had his share of obstinacy, unless she were much mistaken.

The sun was setting, and a: mellow light softened the contrasting colours of the great flower borders into what looked like a splendid natural tapestry. In contrast to the green of the smooth lawns it was breath-taking, and Nicola would willingly have lingered and admired for a long time.

Belinda, however, was anxious to move on. And, in the pleasure of showing her new friend the various places she herself favoured, she began to recover some of her natural cheerfulness, and apparently to look forward to life at Elm Court with a little less pessimism.

She even conceded at last that she thought Grandma might agree to some picnics after all, and added, "We have them when Uncle Algie comes, anyway."

"And how often does he come?" Nicola inquired.

Belinda smiled and said, "Oh, any old time," as though Uncle Algie's unpredictable goings and comings amused and pleased her.

"You're very fond of your Uncle Algie, aren't you?" Nicola said, glad to be able to underline something or someone at Elm Court that Belinda liked.

"Oh, yes. Everyone likes him," Belinda declared expansively. And Nicola gathered that the other uncle suffered somewhat by comparison.

For over an hour they wandered in the gardens and shrubberies, Nicola noting with satisfaction that her little charge was healthily tiring herself out. And when she finally said "I think we must go in now, Belinda," there was no objection to a leisurely return to the house.

They approached the lawn from the side this time, and had just come out into the open again when Nicola saw what she thought for a moment was Vaughan Colwell descending the terrace steps.

But the glad cry of "Uncle!" from Belinda, and the way the little girl shot across the lawn to throw her arms round the man who was approaching, was enough to tell Nicola that this was not Uncle Vaughan, but the. other, more popular, uncle.

Algernon Colwell swung his niece up in his arms and kissed her with an unselfconscious warmth which his brother would never have displayed. And, when he had set her down again and they both began to walk back towards Nicola, she saw that, though in height and general appearance the brothers were quite startlingly alike, Algernon was a younger, gayer, altogether more picturesque edition of his brother.

The smile which he unhesitatingly turned on her was compelling in its friendliness, and Nicola realised at once there was something exhilarating—almost exciting—about the way his dark eyes rested appreciatively upon one.

"He's the kind of man who always makes a woman feel that she's looking her best," thought Nicola. "No wonder he is popular."

He took her hand in a warm, strong clasp, and his voice, though superficially like his brother's in quality and pitch, had friendly overtones which gave it an extremely pleasant quality as he said:

"I've been hearing quite a lot about you, Miss Martin, and I feel we should all be most grateful to you."

"Not at all." She found herself smiling at him, as at an old friend. "Anyone else would have done just the same in the circumstances. I'm only sorry that it was such a sad occasion that brought me here.''

"Yes." For a moment his well-shaped, rather full lips set in a very straight line. "It's a bad business. I'd like to have a' chat with you afterwards. But it's time this young woman went to bed first."

"I agree." Nicola smiled at Belinda, while she found herself wondering how it was that Algernon Colwell could convey such an impression of flattering interest and attention in the simple words, "I'd like to have a chat with you."

"Will you come and say good night to me when I'm in bed. Uncle?" Belinda asked.

"Yes, of course." He ruffled her hair affectionately, and she went away with Nicola, quite satisfied.

Although of course she was not young enough to require any real assistance in the matter of getting to bed, Nicola guessed that it would be best for her to have company right up to the time she was safely tucked in between the sheets. And she felt quite passionately grateful to Algernon Colwell for arriving at just the right minute to kiss the child good night, and generally make her feel that she was among people who loved her and found her important.

"It's just a question of manner, of course," Nicola told herself. "But oh, how it does count at moments like these!"

And then he said to her, "Do you feel like going back to the garden? I really should like this talk with you. There are several things I want to know."

"Of course."

"Better slip on a coat." He sounded as though it were really a matter of moment to him that she should not feel cold. "It gets chilly as soon as the sun is down."

So she went for the first time into the room which had been assigned to her, and allowed herself a moment or two of half-scared admiration over its sombre luxury. Her rather scanty luggage, which had been brought up for her, looked a little forlorn in such surroundings. But, having slipped a soft chestnut-coloured jacket over her grey linen dress, she glanced at herself in the immense mahogany-framed mirror, and decided that she presented quite an agreeable addition to the scene.

It was the first time she had thought much about her appearance since setting out on her holiday early the previous morning. But the prospect of a talk with Algernon Colwell was not one that any girl would have entertained without at any rate a fleeting consideration of her appearance, and Nicola was glad that the overpowering mirror gave back a pleasing reflection.

Smooth, bright hair, which picked up chestnut tints from the coat she was wearing, level, well-spaced grey eyes under rather strongly marked eyebrows, an oval-shaped face, with good width across the brow and an intriguingly pointed chin. She was not, Nicola reflected realistically, what one would call a beauty, but there was no reason why Algernon Colwell—or anyone else, for that matter—should find her difficult to look at.

He was waiting for her at the top of the wide staircase, and, as she came up with him, she was pleased to realise that, tall though he was, she topped his shoulder by an inch—which meant that she must do the same with his brother Vaughan, and she had a feeling that she might sometimes be glad in future not to be too much at a disadvantage with Vaughan, even on the simple matter of height.

Still there was no sign of either Mrs. Colwell or the elder brother, and on their way out to the garden once more they saw no one—except for a fleeting glimpse of Mrs. Dory, whose grave, "shut-in" face broke into an almost expansive smile at the sight of Algernon Colwell.

"I expect you've heard the bare outlines of the story. How I—found your sister, and took charge of Belinda," Nicola said as they left the terrace once more, and he led the way to a garden seat, set in the shelter of a tremendous curved yew hedge.

"It was a very bare outline indeed," he assured her. "Mother was in no condition to hear the whole story, and as Vaughan was telling her—and me only incidentally—I had to pick up what I could. I'd be glad to hear your own account of what happened."

So Nicola once more recounted the events of the previous incredible evening and night, giving her story this time with a good deal more sympathetic detail than had seemed necessary when she reported to the police sergeant.

Most of the time he stood looking down at her, his hands thrust into his pockets, while from time to time he absently pushed a pebble from side to side with the toe of his shoe. Only twice did he ask a question. The first time to inquire if she were sure of what Braydon had said as he left the house, and the second time to confirm that she thought his sister had been dead a good while when she found her.

"I'm afraid he just bolted from the scene," Nicola said. 'And now, after what I've heard of him, I suppose I can't say I'm surprised."

"What have you heard of him?"

Her companion looked at her with such bright, quizzical eyes that Nicola found herself blushing a little.

"Well, Mrs. James said ‑"

"Mrs. James?"

"The wife of the police sergeant at Fennell Thorpe."

"Oh, yes—I know. The nearest village to Frank Braydon's cottage. That was where you met Vaughan, I take it, making inquiries?"

"Yes. I had gone there to report what had happened. Your brother and the sergeant went off to the cottage, and Belinda and I were left in the care of Mrs. James. I—don't want you to think that I started gossiping. But I understand that the Jameses had once been stationed near here, and she knew the family and naturally volunteered a certain amount of information about them."

"Such as—that Frank Braydon was no good."

"We-ell, at least I gathered that he was in the wrong in an unfortunate family dispute."

Algernon Colwell was silent.

"Wasn't that correct?" she asked at last. "Wasn't he in the wrong."

"My dear," he said—and he said it pleasantly, not at all familiarly—"it's always very difficult in family disputes to say who is in the wrong and who in the right." He sat down beside her on the seat then, and leant forward with his elbows on his knees and his hands lightly clasped. "Frank Braydon is a friend of mine ‑"

"Oh!" She looked rather startled.

"And, candidly, I would rather deal with him than with my brother. Somehow I don't get on very well with these 'holier-than-thou' people. I would hesitate to sit in judgment on Frank with such conviction as my brother does."

"But—he doesn't seem to have made your sister very happy," Nicola felt bound to point out.

"Who? Vaughan or Frank?" inquired her companion, with a dry little smile.

"I meant her husband."

Algernon Colwell rubbed his chin meditatively, and his smile deepened.

"Well, that's something else that I suppose is very difficult for an outsider to define in black and white," he said.

"Oh, yes, of course! I—wasn't presuming to press my own views. They aren't too well informed, for one thing. And, anyway, it isn't my business. Please don't think I was being curious or—interfering."

"That's all right." He actually put out a hand and patted hers as they lay clasped in her lap. "You've been drawn into this thing willy-nilly, and, of course, if we're going to talk about it at ail, you're entitled to ask a few questions and express a few views."

"I was only thinking that—Mrs. James, once more, spoke of your sister returning home after she'd been married only about' a year. That was why I said what I did about her husband not appearing to have made her very happy."

"Um-hm. I suppose that's how it looks on the face of it. But there's sometimes such a thing as home pressure over these matters, you know."

"Ye-es. I could imagine that," Nicola agreed, and thought of Vaughan Colwell's uncompromising line of jaw. "Again, if it's not being inquisitive, could you tell me what happened in the week or so before your sister left the house with Belinda? She herself—Belinda, I mean—gave me her account of it, but, of course, it covered only what a child would observe."

"There isn't much my young niece misses," declared her companion with a smile. "But, of course, she couldn't know the real set-up. Frank hadn't even seen my sister, you understand, for several years. She had broken with him completely —under pressure from Mother and my brother, if you want my own candid opinion—but he had not given up hope of persuading her to come back to him. After all, she was his wife, and it's hot unreasonable to feel that a wife's place is with her husband."

"I suppose not," Nicola agreed, thinking how different the same story could sound when told by different people.

"I saw him in London not long ago, and I advised him to present himself quite boldly at Elm Court."

"Invite himself to stay, you mean?"

"Well, at least insist on seeing something of Ginette, with a view to persuading her to reconsider their most unsatisfactory position."

Nicola considered that judicially.

"Ye-es, I do see that it might seem good counsel at the time. But, considering her disposition, wasn't it rather—unwise to involve her in a situation which could only be harrowing and disturbing for her?"

"Unwise?" He laughed a little bitterly. "Yes, as one can most confidently say after the event, it was a criminally foolish piece of advice to give. But then I didn't know how badly her heart had deteriorated. I doubt if any of us did."

"Yes—I see. As you say, it's easy to be wise after the event. Did he know about her weak heart?"

"Oh, I suppose Vaughan told him. Probably he discounted at least half the seriousness of Vaughan's words as being merely chosen to scare him off. Anyway, I don't doubt there were some painful scenes, and then poor old Frank decided the only thing was to cut the Gordian knot and persuade her to elope with him, so to speak."

"Yes, I gathered that was what he did," Nicola said, feeling that "poor old Frank" had shown less than consideration for his unhappy, delicate young wife in this. Besides, she had in her mind's eye a clear picture of Ginette struggling with a heavy suitcase because Frank Braydon had not had the nerve to bring the car round to the front door, and, rather illogically, she blamed him more for that than for anything else.

"I don't imagine he meant to take Ginette and Belinda to the cottage. It was some week-end country place of his, and much too easy to trace. But I suppose when she was taken ill he thought of it as the nearest place he could take her without having awkward questions asked."

"No doubt. But it was also the first place that Vaughan— your brother—thought of. At least, he had got as far as making inquiries at the nearest police-station." ‑\

"Silly ass," muttered the younger Colwell disgustedly. "Why couldn't he have let well alone?"

"It wasn't 'well', for one thing," Nicola pointed out with strict justice. "And, as it turned out, it was a good thing he had come to make inquiries. No doubt that made it possible to keep the whole thing much quieter than if I had just walked in and reported the suspicious death of an unknown woman."

"Oh, I suppose you're right," he agreed with a sigh. Then he added moodily, "There'll have to be an inquest, of course."

"Oh, dear, I suppose so! And I shall have to go?"

"I'm afraid so. Do you mind very much?"

"Not really—no. One's glad to be of any help one can at a time like this."

"You're a nice girl, Miss Martin!" he exclaimed with a sort of friendly simplicity which she found charming. "I don't know how Vaughan persuaded you to give up your own plans and come along here just to keep Belinda company."

"But I wanted to," Nicola insisted. "I already felt fond of her—she's a dear child—and it worried me to think of her, suddenly deprived of her mother and having to go back home with someone against whom she obviously had some resentment."

"Yes—Vaughan hasn't got what is called 'a way with children", exactly," Algernon Colwell said with a grin.

Nicola was silent, feeling faintly uncomfortable, because she was nearly sure that this conversation had done the elder Colwell a certain amount of injustice—if not in actual expression, at least by implication. On the other hand, her companion was so friendly and so compelling in his eager presentation of his arguments that it was difficult not to go the whole way with him.

"Some people find it very difficult to show their feelings," she said at last, taking refuge in an unexceptional generality.

' The younger Colwell laughed.

"And some people haven't any feelings to show," he retorted teasingly. "Shall we go in now? We don't want you catching cold on your first evening."

It was still quite warm, with no likelihood of anyone catching cold, and Nikola wondered fleetingly if this were just a nice way of saying that he had heard all he wanted to hear and that the conversation might as well end now. But she immediately dismissed the thought, which seemed such an ungracious one to harbour against so charming a person as Algernon Colwell.

As they went into the house, Nicola had a fanciful impression that the shadows, literally and figuratively, closed round them. She would have preferred to stay out in the garden, enjoying the last of the evening light—and Algernon Colwell's gay company—but the pleasant interlude was over, and here was the elder Colwell coming across the hall, to lend emphasis to the fact that life just now was rather a serious business.

It was the first time that Nicola had seen the two brothers together, and she could not but be interested in studying their attitude to each other.

As far as possible, she realised, Vaughan Colwell behaved as though his brother did not exist and, although Algernon drew deliberate, amused attention to himself more than once by adopting a provocative, smiling air, they hardly addressed each other directly at all.

Vaughan Colwell asked Nicola quite courteously whether she had found her room to her liking, whether she had had something to eat and so on. Finally he inquired if Belinda had gone to bed fairly happily.

"Yes. She went about an hour ago. I think she was tired and that she probably went to sleep almost immediately," Nicola told him.

"She seemed a bit comforted to find that I was home," observed the younger Colwell. And though the sentence was harmless enough in itself, it sounded almost insulting in the pleasant, provoking tone he used.

His brother did not bother to reply, but Nicola noticed that he pressed his lips together, as though to control some inner irritation which was by no means unfamiliar.

He kept his outward attention resolutely on Nicola, however, and said:

"I really came to find you and ask if you would be kind enough to come and speak to my mother."

Nicola was startled.

"I—why, yes, of course," she replied, hoping that she had hidden her momentary .reluctance.

"She is in bed now, and has recovered a little from the shock of the news. But she would very much like to see you."

"Then I'll come at once. At least—just give me time to take off my coat and tidy my hair. I shan't be more than five minutes."

"Of course."

She ran upstairs, wondering if the brothers would find anything to say to each other even when they were alone together. But her thoughts no more than touched on that. They were too much occupied with the impending visit to Mrs. Colwell.

Nicola had heard a good deal of that formidable character, she realised, one way and another. Belinda disliked her, her daughter apparently had feared her, Algernon blamed her—at any rate partially—for his sister's broken marriage. Even Mrs. Dory had somehow implied that she was a forceful and intimidating personality.

Visiting her was going to be something of an ordeal. And, as Nicola went to rejoin Vaughan, she was surprised to find that her heart was actually beating rather fast.

"This way." He conducted her along the wide centre passage on the first floor, and paused outside big double doors, on which he knocked softly.

Then he opened one of the doors and stood aside for Nicola to enter the room.

Like all the rooms at Elm Court it was big, lofty, spacious and rather over-furnished with great mahogany pieces from a solid, bygone age. In the centre of the opposite wall stood an immense four-poster bed, and propped up in this against innumerable pillows and cushions was a tiny, pretty old lady.

"Come in, dear, come in," she said in a soft, fluting voice, as Nicola paused in the doorway. "Vaughan tells me you were the one who found my poor girl, just after that scoundrel had killed her. Come here, child. I want you to tell me about it."

CHAPTER IV

Nicola was so overwhelmingly astonished by Mrs. Colwell's appearance—which differed in every particular from anything she had imagined—that for a moment she still hesitated on the threshold of the room.

But Vaughan Colwell's hand on her arm almost peremptorily bade her go forward. And, indefinably irritated though she was by the touch, she obeyed him.

Mrs. Colwell held out a delicate hand languidly to her, and when Nicola took this she found it cool and thin, and with a curious boneless quality about it which faintly repelled her. But, remembering that the woman before her—whatever had been hinted to her discredit—had just been suddenly and brutally bereaved, she said gently:

"I'm so sorry for the reason that brings me here, Mrs. Colwell. I wish I had something happier to speak about than how your daughter died. But I'm glad, at least, that I was there, and able to take care of your little grand-daughter."

"Belinda is almost unnaturally capable of looking after herself," retorted Mrs. Colwell with unexpected asperity. Then her voice softened again, and she added, "But we are grateful to you, of course. And now tell me about my poor girl."

For the third time—and choosing her words as carefully as possible, so as not to give any unnecessary pain—Nicola told her story, while the old lady in the bed fixed her with a bright gaze which never wavered, even when Nicola spoke of the moment when she had realised that Ginette Colwell was dead.

"And you say that miserable wretch simply ran away, like a criminal, after killing her?" the sweet voice said at last, as Nicola paused.

It was the second time Mrs. Colwell had used this expression which sought to fasten almost murderous intent on the unfortunate Frank Braydon, and, small though her sympathy was with him and comparatively little though she had been affected by what Uncle Algernon had said, Nicola felt bound to protest.

"I don't imagine he was responsible for your daughter's death in any deliberate sense, Mrs. Colwell," she said as tactfully as possible. But the old lady's face hardened indescribably, and her eyes became like pretty blue stones.

"He persuaded her to leave her good home where she was safe, and he made her undertake exertions and emotional scenes which killed her. If that is not being responsible, I don't know what is," she said bitterly.

"But I suppose he had no idea ‑"

"I don't think I should undertake the defence of Frank Braydon just now, Miss Martin," Vaughan Colwell's voice said dryly behind her. "It's hardly the moment to make my mother view him in a sympathetic light, you know."

Nicola had not the least desire to undertake Frank Braydon's defence with any degree of warmth, and the suggestion that she might, secretly annoyed her very much. However, she reminded herself quickly that she was taking part in a scene which must be painful to the other two, so she controlled her irritation and said, though coolly:

"I wasn't interested in defending him very ardently. So far as I can judge, he seems to have flayed a poor part, to say the least of it. But, at a time when a sudden death has taken place, I—I thought it better not to use an expression which carries a very definite and dangerous meaning."

"I am in the habit of using what expressions I please, Miss Martin," observed Mrs. Colwell. And Nicola was left with the feeling of a presumptuous lady-in-waiting who had queried an utterance of a royal mistress.

A little amused as well as vexed by the absurdity of it all, Nicola bit her lip and controlled any desire she might have had to justify her words further. She saw that this was not an old lady with whom one argued, and she thought she began to see why poor Ginette had just run away, rather than attempt to justify her wish to do what she pleased with her own life.

Her silence—which was neither sulky nor embarrassed— seemed rather to impress her two companions. And, after a moment, Mrs. Colwell said:

"You must not be offended, Miss Martin. I am used to speaking plainly."

Nicola smiled equably.

"You would have to speak much more plainly than that before you could offend me at such a time, Mrs. Colwell," she assured the old lady kindly. "And, of course, any observations of mine were made entirely as an onlooker. Naturally I shouldn't presume to be dogmatic about people I had never even met."

"Very wise of you." Mrs. Colwell inclined her head with a gracious little movement which was, however, condescending rather than friendly. "I hope you will be very comfortable while you are staying here."

"It was most kind of you ‑" began Nicola.

But the old lady held up her hand—not, Nicola thought, without some pleasure in contemplating its delicate transparency.

"Not at all. We are not inclined to forget a service to our family." The "we" took on an almost regal flavour. "And I understand that, apart from the fact that you will be required at the inquest, you have been most useful"—she paused and corrected herself—"most helpful where Belinda is concerned. She is an extremely difficult child, and could well cause a great deal of trouble at a time like this."

Only by biting her lip hard did Nicola prevent herself from rushing into an indignant defence of Belinda. But, after silently counting ten, she was able to content herself with saying:

"She was very good all day today. And one must remember that she, too, will be suffering from shock and grief."

Mrs. Colwell gave a thin smile.

"Belinda is an insensitive child," she stated unequivocally. "I doubt if she is capable of feeling much shock. And then children's emotions are very shallow, particularly at that age. Once she has adjusted herself to the changed circumstances, she will not shed many tears, I am sure."

Nicola recalled her impression of smothered grief and bewilderment when she had been with Belinda that day, and found it impossible to remain silent.

"She is a self-contained child, Mrs. Colwell. I don't think she is by any means insensitive, and I'm afraid ‑"

"My dear"—the term carried no degree of friendliness of warmth with it—"you must allow me to know my own grandchild best. Even though," she added bitterly, "the child has so much of her miserable father in her."

"But don't you think ‑" began Nicola eagerly.

"Perhaps we shouldn't stay and tire you any more. Mother." Vaughan spoke suddenly from the window, where he had withdrawn during most of this conversation, "and stood leaning against the shutter, taking no part in the discussion but listening, Nicola thought, with a good deal of attention.

"It might be better for you to go," his mother agreed, sinking back among the pillows, and immediately looking more frail and weary than ever.

Nicola rose from her chair by the bed, trying to feel some natural sympathy for anyone who could look so old and drained. But, for once, her essentially warm heart refused to respond, and she could manage nothing more than a conventionally expressed hope that Mrs. Colwell would sleep well before she withdrew—once more accompanied by the elder Colwell.

"Thank you," he said a little formally, once they were outside the door. "I think my mother was glad to have your personal account of what happened."

Nicola smiled rather ruefully.

"It would have been better to have kept things on a rather less controversial basis," she said.

To her surprise he smiled slightly in his turn, as though he knew all too well the difficulties of conducting any conversation with his mother.

"She is used to expressing herself forcefully."

"So she said." Nicola's tone was a little dry. But she recovered her good humour almost immediately and added, "One should humour anyone who is old and unhappy, of course. But—it was hard to refrain from saying anything when I so completely disagreed."

"You must forgive her. I'm afraid she has been greatly spoilt." Again Nicola was surprised that he should admit her to his confidence thus far. "She was a famous beauty in her youth, you know. And, then, after my father married her, it was his almost eccentric pleasure to indulge her every whim."

"A practice which you have now continued?" suggested Nicola shrewdly.

He shrugged.

"It isn't easy to alter the habits of a lifetime. Miss Martin. I'm not sure that it is even wise to try."

"No. I know what you mean. And, of course, I personally don't at all mind her dictatorial little ways."

"Don't you?" He seemed amused by that.

"No. Even if they annoyed me more than they actually do, I should remind myself that it was a purely temporary irritation. But I could imagine—Belinda might find things difficult."

This time he did not dismiss the subject of his niece in any summary manner. Instead, with a gesture, he invited Nicola to sit in one of the deep window-seats at the top of the stairs and exchange a few more words with him.

Nicola sat down immediately, and after a moment lie dropped into the seat beside her, leant back with his arms folded and his long legs stretched out in front of him, and said:

"Belinda will be well looked after in every—material way, you know."

"I haven't the least doubt of it. No one could look at her and suppose she is in any sense neglected. But—that isn't all, Mr. Colwell."

"No. I know it isn't."

"A child does need to feel loved. I don't mean that in any sentimental sense."

"No. Only in the sense that it applies to all human creatures," was the astonishing thing he said. "And particularly when they are young and insecure."

"Why—yes. I—couldn't agree with you more."

Nor could she hide her astonishment that such a sentiment should be voiced by Vaughan Colwell, and, from his faint smile, it was obvious that he appreciated the fact.

"You mustn't think that I'm not fond of my niece," he told Nicola gravely.

"Mr. Colwell, it isn't important that I should be confident of that fact. It's important that Belinda should."

He bit his lip.

"She doesn't like me much," he said reflectively.

It was impossible for Nicola to offer eager denials of that, so she said rather doubtfully:

"I gather that circumstances have forced you into what seems to Belinda to be the opposition camp."

"There was nothing as definite as opposing camps in this household," he protested with a frown.

"Perhaps not. But to a child it would seem that way. If you will forgive me for speaking frankly, I think Belinda feels that her Uncle Algie was on the side of her mother and herself, and that you and her grandmother definitely were not. I'm well aware that this is a silly over-simplification of the case," she added as she saw his frown deepen. "But I'm only telling you how it probably appears to Belinda."

"Ye-es, I see what you mean." He spoke reluctantly, but as though he would not deny the truth as he saw it. "But how are we to remedy that. Miss Martin? The situation is really complicated by one or two unfortunate elements. Naturally, as you are practically a stranger, I can hardly go into the— various family implications with you ‑"

"Of course not!"

"Oh, don't get the idea that there is very much to hide." He smiled almost genially at that. "It's just ‑" He paused and seemed to follow his own thoughts for a moment. Then he said slowly, "Of course if you were staying longer—if you were, for instance, likely to become a permanent part of the household ‑"

Again he paused, and she waited for him to finish his sentence. But the silence lengthened until it gained in significance, and, in some surprise, Nicola glanced up to find him studying her coolly and reflectively.

"Mr. Colwell, are you ‑? Why don't you finish your sentence?" she asked curiously.

"Because I am not quite sure that I know how to finish it," he retorted with that slight smile again. Then he added, almost brusquely, "Miss Martin, what do you do for your living, in the ordinary way?"

"I was secretary and receptionist to a doctor."

"You were? You mean you are not now?"

"Oh, my employer—he was Sir Geraint Eldon, the famous children's specialist—retired very recently. I was just having a holiday before I looked out for new employment."

"I see. So you hive had a good deal of experience with children, which accounts for your handling of Belinda?"

"Oh, well"—Nicola smiled indulgently—"I also lived for years with a married brother, and his family. One picks up a good knowledge of children in a happy middle-class home, you know. I even did a certain amount of unofficial governessing when one of the children was home from school for three months with a badly broken leg."

"So that child management holds no terrors for you?"

"Terrors? Oh, no." She laughed at the idea.

"Tell me"—he looked full at her in a penetrating way which would have been extremely disconcerting if she had had anything to hide, Nicola could not help thinking—"what would you say are the essentials for a happy childhood?"

"Love, security, discipline," Nicola replied unhesitatingly. Then—"In that order," she added, smiling. "If those three things are firmly in evidence, most children, other than genuine problem children, are happy and reasonably carefree."

He didn't answer that immediately, and she wondered, with a touch of embarrassment, how they had become involved in this purely academic discussion. But, almost as she rose to go, he put out his hand and detained her.

"One moment." The tone would have been peremptory if he had not infused an unusual degree of warmth into it. "How would you care to stay on here. Miss Martin, and undertake to look after Belinda?"

She looked at him in astonishment.

"But—in what capacity, Mr. Colwell? I'm not qualified to be a regular governess to a child of Belinda's age, you know."

"That wouldn't be necessary. She goes to school, of course, in term time. I drive her in each day to Morgenton, and, even in the changed circumstances, we should not want her to be more than a weekly boarder at her school. What I am concerned with is her home life."

"Yes, I—do see your problem. You mean that, with neither you nor your brother married, the only woman here would be your mother, who dislikes her."

He bit his hp at the candour of that.

"There is often a certain amount of—prejudice with a woman of my mother's age."

"Certainly. I'm not expressing an opinion. I'm stating a fact."

There was a moment's silence, then he slightly inclined his head, presumably in acceptance of the fact, however unpalatable.

"I could imagine that your presence here would make a great difference to Belinda."

Nicola thought of Belinda saying that the house would be bearable if she herself were there always. But she could not, of course, consider such a radical change in her own life on that basis only.

"I should have to think it over, Mr. Colwell."

"Of course."

"And I really should have to know my exact status here. I couldn't just live here, with no duties while Belinda was at school and rather nebulous ones when she was at home."

"Yes. I see that. I can't, naturally, make arrangements on my mother's behalf, but she does require something in the nature of a secretary-companion ‑"

"No, Mr. Colwell." Nicola smiled, but her tone was quite firm. "If I accepted employment here, I should have to be engaged by you. If your mother were my direct employer it would be quite impossible for me to make Belinda my first consideration."

Again he seemed taken aback by her frankness. But again, after having considered what she had said, he seemed to accept the essential truth of it.

"All right. There is one other possibility. Have you any objection to working for me? Personally, I mean." And the dryness of his tone showed that he had not accepted her implied criticism of his mother entirely without resentment.

"Of course not." Nicola was a little surprised herself at the promptness with which she gave that assurance, and he slightly raised his eyebrows and smiled rather sardonically.

"Well, you may or may not know that I am the head of a big iron and steel works in Morgenton, where of course I have my own staff and private secretary. At the same time, I have a fair amount of outside correspondence, much of which could be more conveniently dealt with from here. Would you be prepared to take on that work and regard yourself as—shall we say—my personal secretary at home?"

"I think—I should."

"Still making Belinda your first concern, of course. I don't want you to lose sight of the fact that my chief intention in all. this is to provide the child with a happy home life."

"Yes. I understand that."

"And you are willing to think it over?"

"Yes. Not perhaps on a very long-term basis, Mr. Colwell, because I shouldn't want to make a permanent thing of any arrangement where I had to surrender the degree of independence that one must in a position where one lives in."

"We'll try not to interfere with your independence," he said rather disagreeably as he got up to go. "And I don't think you need worry about the permanency of the arrangement. As you said earlier in this conversation, the need for it arises only because neither my brother nor myself is married. That position will be altered in something like six months' or a year's time, since I recently became engaged and ‑"

"Did you?"

"Tastes differ, you know," he said, and that sardonic smile showed again for an instant in unkind acknowledgment of the surprise which she had not been able to keep out of her tone. "And when my wife is here, I imagine that she will be quite capable of creating the right home atmosphere for Belinda."

"No doubt," Nicola agreed, still blushing over her unfortunate expression of surprise. Only—it was rather difficult to imagine Vaughan Colwell as the romantic lover, or, indeed, very deeply involved with any of the softer emotions.

As she went to her room, however, she recalled with interest that he had spoken penetratingly—almost as though with personal knowledge—when he referred to the fact that all human creatures needed to be loved. That was an odd thing for him to have said., An odd subject on which to sound knowledgeable, if one were Vaughan Colwell. Perhaps he had hidden depths and affections which she had not yet discovered.

"But for whom?" thought Nicola, as she undressed in the rather overpowering splendour of her too-large bedroom.

He seemed a correct son rather than a loving one, and had not, Nicola thought, any illusions about his mother. He almost actively disliked his brother, from all appearances. And, though he spoke of being fond of Belinda, there had been no evidence of any warm, personal affection.

That he had been devoted to his dead sister was quite a possibility. But, except for that, Nicola decided, he was probably a rather cold man, with no close human ties. The remark which had impressed her must simply have been an academic expression of opinion—an idea to which he subscribed in theory without bothering to put it into active practice.

After her disturbed sleep of the previous night, and her exciting day, Nicola slept dreamlessly and well, and awoke to a beautiful August morning, with the sunlight pouring in through the two great bay windows, and the birds singing and twittering outside.

For a second she wondered where she was. Then, remembering, she stretched out her hand for her watch, and discovered that it was still quite early.

She lay there enjoying the luxury of her beautiful bed, the fresh loveliness of the morning, and the sensation—welcome and unusual after the last forty-eight hours—of not having any immediate crisis with which to deal.

But the morning was too lovely to ignore, and after a few minutes she got up, bathed in what appeared to be her own private bathroom, dressed and quietly opened her bedroom door.

The wide passage stretched, silent and empty, in front of her, and even from Belinda's room there was no sound of stirring.

Treading lightly and silently, so as not to disturb anyone, she went quietly along the passage and down the stairs. And, finding a side door unlocked, she slipped out into the gardens, where the light morning dew still sparkled on the grass and the flowers shimmered with colour in the early morning sunshine.

Looking round, Nicola thought that, if she really decided to accept Vaughan Colwell's suggestion, she would certainly have no reason to complain of the beauty of the surroundings in which her next few months would be passed.

Never in her life had she expected to live in such a place and, although she was not one to attach a superlative value to externals, Nicola knew that it would be absurd not to admit that soft and gracious living had a charm all its own.

Just to be able to walk in gardens like these, in the early morning or in the cool of the evening, would be immeasurably pleasant. And, provided Mrs. Colwell had not too much to do with her actual employment, Nicola thought she could contrive to live very happily at Elm Court for a while.

After the inquest, of course, she would have to take a few days to return her cousin's car and make some personal arrangements of her own. There was her small flat to be considered—Nicola bit her lip thoughtfully as she reached this point in her reflections.

To retain it would be, on the face of it, an absurd extravagance, and yet she felt extraordinarily loath to part with it and allow herself to feel that she had no anchorage except in this place.

The strength of this feeling surprised her, and she could only suppose that, as she had arrived at Elm Court by such a sequence of peculiar and improbable happenings, she found it impossible to accept the new position with any feeling of security or reassurance. It was as though it were something outside the natural pattern of her life and therefore not to be taken completely seriously.

"I'll manage to sublet the flat," Nicola muttered to herself, and was slightly ashamed t6 realise that she was pandering to little more than a nervous impulse which she could not quite explain, even to herself.

For nearly an hour she wandered in the grounds, familiarising herself with the layout of the place, and pausing to admire the rather solid grandeur of the house from various viewpoints.

It was, she judged, very nearly breakfast-time by the time she had worked her way round to the main drive, up which they had come by car the previous evening. And, as she turned to follow this very direct route to the house, there was the sound of an eccentrically musical motor-horn, and a small light blue car turned into the drive and proceeded to overtake her.

As it came abreast of her, the driver—an extremely pretty girl with almost silvery blonde hair—stopped and called out:

"Hallo! Who are you?"

Nicola came to the side of the car and, smiling because the girl was so pretty, said:

"My name is Nicola Martin, and I'm staying here with Belinda for a little while."

"Oh——" Her questioner opened hyacinth-blue eyes very wide. "You're the girl who found Ginette, aren't you?"

Nicola hesitated a moment. Then, dismissing the idea that this fairy-like looking creature could be a newshawk, she said:

"Yes—I did. But I don't know who you are."

"Oh, hasn't anyone told you about me?" The girl smiled, showing small, beautiful, slightly pointed teeth. "I'm Felicity Dearborn, Vaughan's fiancée."

"Oh, yes, of course! I might have guessed."

"I was away in town all yesterday, and came back too late— or, rather"—she laughed—"too early this morning to telephone Vaughan. But he'd left a note for me telling me something of what happened. Poor Ginette! It's too awful, isn't it?"

Her whole expression changed to one of exquisite melancholy, but what struck Nicola most was that she had been able to laugh almost gaily about a trifling remark practically in the same breath with which she commented on the awfulness of "poor Ginette's" fate.

"Yes. It's a very sad business," Nicola agreed, rather dryly.

"Get in, and I'll drive you up to the house." Felicity Dearborn leaned forward hospitably and opened the door of the car. "Tell me, weren't you simply terrified when you found Ginette dead?"

"Terrified," Nicola replied in a not very encouraging tone. And she wondered how much Vaughan had seen fit to disclose in his letter to his fiancée.

However, she got into the car, noticing as she did so that its driver was wearing a very, very handsome diamond ring on her left hand. She tried to imagine what Vaughan Colwell ad this charming butterfly creature could possibly have in common.

But she had not succeeded in finding anything by the time they arrived at the house.

This time the front door stood open and, evidently very much at home, Felicity ran up the steps and into the hall, followed a little more slowly by Nicola.

"Hallo, Perkins." She was already greeting one of the servants in a friendly way by the time Nicola caught up with her. "Isn't this a dreadful business about Miss Ginette?"

No one, Nicola noticed, ever appeared to give Ginette her married name or status.

"Yes, Miss Felicity." The man looked appropriately solemn, but his eyes expressed warm admiration of the picture his questioner made. And Nicola decided in that moment that probably few men contented themselves with looking at Miss Felicity once only.

"Where is Mr. Vaughan?"

"He hasn't come down yet, miss. But I think I heard him moving about upstairs. Would you like me to call him?"

"Oh, no, it's all right, thank you. I'll just wait"—she dropped into one of the high-backed hall-seats in an unconsciously beautiful pose—"and talk to Miss ‑" She hesitated, then smiled and said, "Nicola."

There was something so charmingly flattering in the friendly intimacy of this that Nicola—although she was almost sure that the whole thing was calculated to a nicety—could not withhold an answering smile of almost equal warmth.

"Come and tell me a little more about what happened. What about poor little Belinda?" And for a moment Felicity's rather high, sweet voice softened to a note of genuine feeling.

"She took it very well, on the whole."

"You mean she knows!"

"Oh, yes." Nicola sat down at the other end of the hall-seat, slightly turned so as to face Felicity.

"Who told her?"

"I did."

"Oh, aren't you brave!"

"No. Not specially. I didn't like having to do it, but I was probably the most suitable person available."

"I can see you're very strong-minded," Felicity said in an admiring tone which left Nicola suddenly feeling abominably healthy and hearty and unattractive. "I couldn't have done it, you know. I'm very sensitive, and I just can't stand ugly or sad things."

"Sometimes," Nicola said dryly, "one has to."

"Yes, of course, but ‑ Well, I just don't know what I'd have done in your place. And I'm quite sure I should have fainted if I'd found anyone—dead, the way you did."

Nicola did not reply to this at once. Something in the combination of this girl's obvious sensationalism and her desire to be thought sensitive was oddly disconcerting. Finally she said in a deliberately matter-of-fact tone:

"It wasn't an experience I enjoyed. But, again, sometimes one has to go through with something frightening and unpleasant the best way one can."

"Ye-es. I suppose so." The beautiful blue eyes were on Nicola again in a speculative gaze. "How long are you going to stay here?"

"I don't really know." Nicola was not, she decided, going to discuss her future with anyone else before she had settled its outlines with Vaughan Colwell. "Certainly until after the inquest."

"Oh, of course! There'll have to be an inquest, won't there?"

"I'm afraid so."

"Will they arrest Frank Braydon, do you suppose?"

"I don't imagine so. Why should they?"

"Oh, I don't know. I just thought ‑ Well, he'll have to appear at the inquest, anyway, won't he?"

"If he can be traced—yes."

"The police always manage to trace anyone," Felicity asserted, with a fine faith in the police.

"Well, then, no doubt he will appear," Nicola said dryly. "But there is no necessity to regard him in the light of a criminal."

Felicity eyed Nicola thoughtfully, and asked:

"Are you a friend of Frank Braydon?"

"Certainly not! I know practically nothing about him."

"Oh, I just thought ‑" This was a favourite term of Felicity's. "Algernon is, you know."

"Is he?" Nicola said, refusing to be "drawn". And at that moment Vaughan's rather heavy tread was heard coming along the upstairs passage.

Felicity went to the foot of the stairs and looked up, and, as she did so, he came into view at the top of the stairs.

Involuntarily Nicola had glanced up, too, so that she had a full view of Vaughan's face when he first caught sight of Felicity. And that one glimpse told Nicola more about him than anything which had happened before.

He might be an undemonstrative son, he might be a self-contained uncle and an indifferent brother. But to the girl he had chosen for his wife, he was an extravagantly and romantically devoted lover.

CHAPTER V

IN THAT MOMENT of revelation about the strength of Vaughan Colwell's feelings, Nicola was aware of something almost like shock.

She rose quickly and went into the breakfast-room, so as to leave the two lovers together in their first meeting after the tragedy of Ginette. But—like all people who witness a demonstration of intense affection without having the remotest connection with it—she had a curiously cut-off, almost lonely feeling.

It passed almost immediately, and she even laughed at herself for experiencing it. But she was still left with a sense of genuine wonder that anything as superficial as Felicity could arouse such intensity of emotion.

Until Belinda came into the room—which she did two or three minutes later—Nicola occupied herself with studying the titles of the books on the long, glassed-in shelves which covered almost the whole of one side of the room.

They were an extremely varied selection, ranging from established classics to the most up-to-date thrillers, and she was just thinking that someone must have very catholic taste when Belinda came over and hugged her with unwonted demonstrativeness.

"Hallo. I thought you might have gone away again."

"Oh, no, Belinda. I told you I was going to stay for a while."

"Yes. But people don't always do what they say they will. They can't always," Belinda insisted. And Nicola, remembering that the child's experience in this respect had been rather disillusioning lately, forbore to argue with her.

"Well, as you see, I am here," she said reassuringly. "And I'm going to stay."

"How long?" Belinda glanced at her quickly.

"Possibly quite a long time. I have to talk things over with your uncle."

"Which uncle?"

"Oh—your Uncle Vaughan, of course." Nicola did not suppose that one ever talked over serious arrangements with Uncle Algie. "He is anxious that you should feel happy here, and asked me if I would consider staying on indefinitely."

"Oh, Nicola! You will, won't you?"

Nicola smiled, and finally made up her mind.

"Yes," she said, "if we can arrange all the details satisfactorily."

"Oh, do arrange them right away," Belinda begged. "Where is Uncle Vaughan? He ought to be down to breakfast by now."

Nicola laid a detaining hand on Belinda's shoulder as she would have rushed from the room.

"He's with Felicity—Miss Dearborn, I think. Didn't you see them as you came through the hall?"

"No." Belinda turned her head and gave Nicola a surprised glance. "I expect they'd gone into the drawing-room, or Uncle Vaughan's study. What a funny time for Felicity to call."

"I think she wanted to talk something over with your Uncle," Nicola explained equably.

"Oh—yes." It was evident that Nicola's effort to avoid the real subject of Felicity's visit had not succeeded. "I suppose— she would. I like Felicity."

"Yes," Nicola: said pleasantly. "I imagine most people like her. She is very pretty and friendly."

"A bit silly, of course," Belinda added judicially, though without ill-feeling. "I expect that comes of being a judge's daughter."

"Dear me, is she? And why should it?" inquired Nicola, failing to see any connection between the two things.

"Oh, he's so terribly clever, you know. There wouldn't— there sort of wouldn't be any room for anyone else to be clever. She's an only child, and she and her mother are both like that. Rather fluttery and sweet. He only speaks about three times a day, and you feel it means an awful lot each time."

Nicola laughed a good deal at this, though she privately paid tribute to Belinda's penetration.

"But I like her," Belinda reiterated. And then, evidently feeling that she had sufficiently summed up the subject of Felicity, she added, "Are you going to teach me, Nicola, or anything like that?"

"No." Nicola shook her head. "You'll go on being at school."

"Oh." Belinda appeared to accept this with resignation rather than enthusiasm. "What are you going to be, then?"

"Your uncle's secretary."

"Uncle Vaughan's?"

"Yes."

"Goodness! Will you—like that?" Belinda looked at her curiously.

"Yes. I think I shall," Nicola said, and laughed a little, but whether at her own surprise or Belinda's she was not quite sure.

Then Vaughan and Felicity came into the room, and it seemed that Felicity was going to stay to breakfast.

She went over to Belinda and kissed her and said, "Hallo, Belinda, dear. I'm glad you're home again." And, when she straightened up, Nicola noticed there were real tears in her eyes.

Maybe she was superficial, and probably she both laughed and cried easily. But it was something that Belinda's situation could touch her to that extent, and Nicola could not help liking her for it.

As for Vaughan, he gave her a look of dark tenderness, as though it moved him deeply simply" to see how warm-hearted his beloved was.

"Probably he is moved, too," reflected Nicola, with a touch of cynicism. "He wouldn't know anything about an easy display of emotion, and to anyone as reserved as he is, I suppose Felicity's tears seem the final expression of a tender heart."

They had hardly sat down to breakfast when footsteps were heard running rapidly downstairs, and Algernon—looking gay and perfectly groomed and smiling—came into the room.

He ignored his brother, ruffled his niece's hair, said "Sleep all right, Miss Martin?" to Nicola, and finally dropped into the seat facing Felicity, with a "Hallo, beautiful. What brings you here so early?"

"I slept very well, thanks," Nicola said, well aware that no one—probably least of all the questioner—cared much about the answer. But she felt instinctively that it was better to say something than to allow Algernon's impertinent query of Vaughan's fiancée to hang significantly in silence.

"Good." Algernon smiled full at her. And then to Felicity, "Of course—I forgot. You were away yesterday, weren't you?"

"Yes. That's why I came over to see Vaughan as—as soon as I heard."

Algernon nodded and reached for some toast, and at that point Belinda contributed to the conversation.

"Nicola is going to stay,"-she informed her younger uncle in a satisfied tone. "She's going to be Uncle Vaughan's secretary."

"Good lord! Tough girl," said Algernon appreciatively. While Nicola found herself blushing annoyedly at having the subject thrown into the general arena of breakfast conversation before she had had time to give her final decision to Vaughan himself.

As it was, he glanced at her with slightly raised eyebrows and a not very pleased expression, which certainly showed no signs of softening when Felicity exclaimed:

"But how odd\ I thought you already had a perfectly good secretary, Vaughan."

"I have," Vaughan replied, with commendable economy of words. "Miss Martin will work here."

"And look after me," supplemented Belinda.

"Oh, I see." Felicity's face cleared completely, and it was only then that Nicola realised how put out and even annoyed her previous expression had been. "Does Mamma know?"

"Not yet."

Algernon presumed to whistle, which prompted Vaughan to say—with unfounded optimism, Nicola could not help thinking:

"She will approve any arrangement which is for Belinda's good and happiness."

No one pursued the subject further after that, though Algernon Colwell indulged in a rather secret little smile, which half annoyed, half intrigued Nicola.

They were a curious family, she thought almost impatiently. But, certainly, working for them was not going to be dull, whatever else it might be. And, on the whole, she was glad she had undertaken the task. '

After breakfast Felicity left in her little blue car, and before Vaughan went off to his office in. Morgenton, Nicola waylaid him and explained that she had decided to accept his offer.

"I'm sorry that my acceptance was flung at you so unexpectedly across the breakfast table," she told him. "I didn't know Belinda would bring the subject up like that, but I had ventured to reassure her about my staying, just before you came in."

He smiled slightly.

"That's all right. I wasn't annoyed. With you," he added, and she had a clear picture of Algernon smiling impertinently at Felicity and saying, "Hallo, beautiful."

Then, in a brief business-like way, he settled the details of employment with her, surprising Nicola considerably by the relatively high price which he seemed to put upon her services.

"I'm not a sensationally good shorthand-typist, you know," she explained rather anxiously. "And I ‑"

"You have other qualities, for which I am willing to pay highly," he interrupted. "They are rarer than shorthand and typing."

"Oh—thank you." Nicola was not easily confused by a compliment, but she smiled and blushed a little over that. "I hope I shall be able to satisfy you."

"I'm sure you will. Oh, and, by the way, Miss Martin, the inquest will be tomorrow. I will drive you over in the car, so will you be ready to make a start about nine?"

"Yes, certainly." And then, as she recalled Felicity's rather absurd comment about Frank Braydon, she could not help adding, "Will your sister's husband be at the inquest?"

"I don't know. I understand there has been a good deal of difficulty about tracing him. It all depends on whether the police attach any great importance to his being there. I'm hoping to heaven they won't think it necessary to postpone the inquest if they haven't traced him."

"Oh, I hope not! It isn't as though there's any suspicion of—of foul play."

"No. I don't think there's any suspicion of—that."

The very slight pause before "the last word seemed to put' some sort of emphasis on it, and Nicola longed to ask if there were any serious suspicion of anything else. But Vaughan went on almost immediately:

"Ginette's own doctor will give evidence that any very unusual strain or effort might have caused heart failure at any time. And whether or not Frank is there won't greatly affect the issue, I imagine."

"I see." She put her hand sympathetically on his arm for a moment. "I'm sure you'll be very thankful when it's all over."

"Yes, Miss Martin, I shall. And even more so when the funeral is over. I hope we shall be able to persuade my mother not to attend."

"But could she? I mean—is she well enough to do so?"

"My mother's state of health is a very curious and fluctuating thing," Vaughan Colwell said dryly. And then he went off, leaving Nicola to make what she pleased of her first day at Elm Court.

It was easy enough to find occupation for herself and Belinda, and, since Mrs. Colwell kept to her room all day, there was no one to question their choice. They spent most of the time out-of-doors, and Nicola was glad to find that though the little girl became melancholy occasionally—particularly when they came upon anything or any place which reminded her of her mother—on the whole, she remained cheerful and happy in her new companion's society.

"I hope ho one will expect her—or me—to go to the funeral," Nicola thought. "Much the best thing would really be for them to let me take her with me for a day or two when I go to London, so that the whole business could be over, without her knowing anything further about it,"

And she decided to consult Vaughan Colwell on the subject that evening.

But, when evening came, there was no opportunity to consult him about anything. He came home for only half an hour, changed and went straight over to Felicity's home. Consequently, Nicola was left to dine alone with Algernon, a situation which—she freely admitted to herself—caused her a degree of uneasy enjoyment like nothing else she had ever experienced.

To sit in the subdued light from electric candles, opposite that almost devilishly handsome, deliberately charming creature, was an experience to. stir a more practised heart than Nicola's. And, although not a word that passed between them was anything but completely proper, Nicola had that by no means disagreeable sensation of skating on thin ice all the time.

The previous evening she had thought of him merely as the gay, friendly, more picturesque of the brothers. Now, she realised, she sensed some spice of danger about him. And truth forced her to admit that he was none the less attractive for that.

Because she had to make conversation about something, she asked him if he, too, worked in the steel works at Morgenton.

"Oh, lord no!" He smiled at her. "I don't look as real and earnest as that, do I?"

She considered him gravely, and then said:

"You don't really look as though you work at all."

He laughed immoderately at that.

"Good for you, Nicola." He had made only the sketchiest pretence of going through the "Miss Martin" stage. "As a matter of fact, you are right."

"You mean you do nothing for a living?"

"I mean that I live on my wits."

"You—what?" Nicola's red lips parted and her eyes widened enormously, but she really had no idea that she looked very charming when she did that.

"Yes, I really said what you thought I said," he assured her amusedly.

"It's an expression which usually carries a rather—doubtful meaning."

"Well, shall we say that I don't use it in its most doubtful sense? But—I augment my private income with as much use of my brain and as little use of my brawn as possible."

"O-oh," she said doubtfully, and she wondered how much he was teasing her, and how much he was telling her the literal truth, because it would sound too outrageous for anyone to believe it.

"Is that why your brother ‑?" She stopped, aware that her interest had almost betrayed her into asking something unpardonably personal.

But Algernon laughed gaily.

"Yes. That's partly why my brother looks down his admirable nose at me. So even you noticed that already?"

"It's a—little difficult not .to," she murmured apologetically.

"Yes. I suppose it is." He frowned, without, somehow, destroying the look of amusement on his face. "Perhaps he's taking things a bit too far. He'll have to mend his ways, or I'll take Felicity away from him."

Nicola refused to smile at the effrontery of that. She looked across the table rather severely at him, and said:

"You shouldn't say things like that."

"Of course I shouldn't, Santa Nicola. But haven't you ever noticed that nearly all the most amusing and interesting things should not be said?"

She laughed reluctantly.

'' I think your brother and Felicity are devoted to each other.''

"Do you?"

"Well, don't you? If you consider the position seriously, I mean, and not merely as a subject for one of your rather outrageous pieces of fun."

He smiled, but not quite so wickedly as before.

"If I consider the position seriously—hm ‑" He twirled his glass thoughtfully on its stem. "If I consider the position seriously, I suppose I am bound to say that Vaughan is undoubtedly very much in love for the first time in his life."

"And—what about her?" For some reason or other, Nicola felt slightly agitated.

"Felicity? Would you say she was capable of loving anyone?"

"In her way—yes."

"Oh, in her way," he agreed, with a tolerant laugh. "From what I know of the tender passion, 'her way' is about as deep as a puddle and as steady as a temperature chart."

Nicola was silent, looking rather troubled. And, after a moment, her companion said softly and teasingly.

"Is it so important?"

"Oh"—she roused herself—"it's not my business, of course. But one's always a littler-disturbed when the feelings of one are so much stronger than those of the other."

"'I that loved and you that liked'," he quoted. "Yes, it can be a dangerous situation."

"But it need not be, if people mind their own business," she countered severely.

"You're charming when you look at me like that," he declared.

"No, I'm not—specially. And I'm perfectly serious about it. You did a certain amount of harm by meddling in your sister's affairs, didn't you?"

She was sorry the moment she had said that, because, from the way his eyes darkened and the easy smile was wiped from his face, she knew that he recalled his part in his sister's affairs with real pain.

"I'm sorry! I shouldn't have said that!" she exclaimed with contrition. "There wasn't really much connection between what you did and—and what happened. And, anyway, you were acting from excellent motives that time, not a—a malicious sense of fun."

"What makes you so sure of that?" he inquired rather moodily.

"Why, you told me. You thought that by urging Frank Braydon to come here you might, perhaps, help your sister and her husband to come together again, didn't you?"

"Oh, sure. That's exactly what I thought." He sighed impatiently. "My motives were of the purest." Then he laughed rather savagely, and, a little frightened, Nicola changed the subject.

During the rest of the meal they talked amicably, but at no time did they regain that mood of light banter in which he had looked at her with boldly admiring eyes, as though he thought her the prettiest thing he had seen for some while. They talked like polite acquaintances, and, as soon as the meal was over, they separated and went their various ways.

Nicola felt oddly depressed as she sat by the open window in her own room, though whether because of anything Algernon had said or because she vaguely dreaded the inquest on the morrow, she was not sure.

She tried to remind herself that none of these people meant very much to her personally, and that it was out of proportion for her to make their problem hers. But her assurances rang hollow, and she realised, a little to her dismay, that she was already beginning to mind very much what happened at Elm Court.

The next morning she was up in good time, but Vaughan had been up sooner. She and Belinda breakfasted alone (of Algernon there was no sign), and at five to nine Nicola was ready and waiting in the entrance hall.

"I wish I could come, too," Belinda said wistfully. "Why do you have to go with Uncle Vaughan on a matter of business? I don't know what business you can have with him."

"It would take too long to explain," Nicola told her, determined not to have any talk of inquests and funerals for Belinda to remember. "After all, you know, I am his secretary now."

"Oh, yes—of course. I'd forgotten."

Vaughan drove the car up to the doorway then, and having kissed Belinda and promised not to be away longer than she could help, Nicola ran down the steps to the waiting car.

"You're punctual," Vaughan smiled slightly at her as he leant forward to open the door.

"Well, I expect we're both feeling that the sooner we get this over, the better."

"That's true," he agreed grimly, and started the car.

When Nicola looked back on the whole experience afterwards, the thing she remembered most clearly was that Vaughan constituted the most complete and reassuring support to her.

It was true that on the journey he talked little. He simply gave her a brief outline of how proceedings would probably go and the type of question she would be asked. But he made no attempt to "brief" her in any way. Indeed, when she asked him anxiously about some point, he said:

"Just describe it in your own words, exactly as you told the story to me, and afterwards to Mother."

"I didn't tell it to you. I told it to the police sergeant," thought Nicola. "I felt too mad with you then to address anything to you."

But naturally she did not remind him of that, then.

She was nervous when it came to the actual inquest. Not because she imagined she had anything personally to fear. But the sensation of tension and anxiety inseparable from an inquiry into an untimely death could not but affect her.

It was all very matter-of-fact, however, and not at all dramatic. The only point at which there was anything approaching a sensation was when the coroner displayed extreme annoyance on discovering that the husband of the dead girl could not be traced.

He took Nicola very carefully through the early part of her evidence again, but she reiterated, with all truth, that she had hardly caught more than a glimpse of the man and exchanged only a few words with him. He was agitated—yes. But no one could have said why, or if the agitation were a guilty agitation.

The coroner seemed extremely dissatisfied, and for a few minutes the possibility of a postponement trembled in the balance. However, the medical evidence disposed of any possible reason for that.

Ginette's personal doctor was emphatic about the dangerous condition of her heart, and the police surgeon stated that there was no question but that the .girl had died from congenital heart disease.

The verdict was inevitably one of "death from natural causes", but the coroner added a stinging reprimand of the absent husband, to which Nicola heard Vaughan murmur a savage "Hear, hear."

It was over at last, and Vaughan drove her straightaway from the court-room, not pausing even for lunch until they had found an inn sufficiently far from the scene of the inquest for them to be untroubled by either pressmen or casual inquirers.

He made Nicola drink something a good deal stronger than she was used to before she had her meal, and when she coughed a little over it, and smiled faintly at him across the table, he smiled in return and asked:

"Better now?"

"Yes, thank you. I didn't really feel too awful, you know."

"Well, it wasn't a nice experience for any girl," he said. And she realised—amused and a little touched—that he probably thought she felt much worse than she actually did. To him women were, doubtless, either delicate, like his mother and sister, or deliberately frail blossoms, like Felicity.

That argued a rather limited experience of women, she supposed. But then she had an odd conviction that his experience of women was limited. Even Algernon's carelessly scornful remark that he was in love for the first time in his life gave some support to that idea. And Nicola decided suddenly that she liked Vaughan Colwell a great deal better than she had at first supposed.

Over lunch she told him of her idea that Belinda should be kept away from anything to do with the funeral.

"It's all been sufficiently melancholy and long-drawn-out, as it is," Nicola pointed out earnestly. "I think I've got her safely past the early shock, and I do think it would be most undesirable to have her suddenly plunged back into an atmosphere of funerals and mourning."

"I agree. But what are we to do with her? Apart from keeping her out in the grounds as much as possible."

"Would you trust her with me? I mean—to take her away from Elm Court for a few days?"

"Take her away, Miss Martin? Where?"

Nicola explained that she herself would have to go to London for a very brief visit on her own affairs.

"I should like to have Belinda with me. I can assure you I should take the greatest care of her."

"I'm quite sure you would," he said. "It's not that."

"What is it, then?"

"Nothing tangible," he admitted with a smile. "I suppose that having Belinda—and Ginette—summarily removed once makes me over-anxious to keep the child under my own eye now."

"Ye-es, I see. But that is rather yielding to an illogical nervousness, isn't it?"

"Undoubtedly," he agreed. "And, since you put it like that, I can see the absurdity of it. How long would you be away?"

"Three or four days at the outside." She explained about having to return her cousin's car, and that she proposed then to continue the journey by train. "I know the idea would appeal immensely to Belinda," she urged.

"I'm sure it would." He smiled again, and she thought the smile was tinged with indulgence. "When do you suggest going?"

"As soon as ever possible. Tomorrow, if—if the child's mother is to be brought back to E}m Court. I would much rather have her right away from the place at such a time."

"Gould you really be ready tomorrow?"

"Why, of course." Nicola laughed. "There aren't very many preparations to make. We could set off about eleven."

"Um-hm. You're right, of course. It's much the best way.'

She glanced at him rather diffidently.

"Mr. Colwell, there is just one other thing ‑"

"Yes?"

"Since you are going to trust Belinda to me, I should like you to put through a long-distance call to London tonight and have a word with Sir Geraint Eldon about me."

"In what way, Miss Martin?"

"Why, I want you to speak to him, as my last employer, and satisfy yourself that I really am a person to be trusted with Belinda."

"Oh—I see." He smiled reflectively as he looked away from her out of the window. "I am already satisfied of the fact that you are a person to be trusted with Belinda. But, if you wish it, I will certainly speak to Sir Geraint Eldon on the subject"

"It really is the right thing to do, you know."

"Then let us do the right thing, by all means," he replied almost gaily. And for a moment he looked singularly like his brother. Only, Nicola thought, a more reliable version of his brother.

As she expected, Belinda was simply delighted with the prospect of a few days On her own with Nicola, and all the evening she followed Nicola about, asking questions and superintending the packing, unpacking and repacking of her own suitcase.

"I can't imagine how Uncle Vaughan persuaded Grandma to say 'yes'," she declared naively to Nicola.

And as Nicola could not imagine either, she had no answer to that. It was enough that somehow permission had been extracted, and Nicola, too, had very much the feeling of getting ready to slip away on a half-stolen holiday.

She insisted on Belinda going to bed at a reasonably early hour, in spite of the little girl's pleas that she would not be able to sleep. And, with the idea of giving herself a good rest after her trying day, and before her new responsibilities, Nicola, too, went to bed early.

Sleep came with a completeness and suddenness which showed that she really was exhausted, but somewhere, deep down in her subconscious, there must still have been the clear-cut impressions of the day. For Nicola woke suddenly, her heart beating heavily, and an odd feeling of foreboding upon her.

For the first second or two she glanced round the dimly moonlit room, not knowing where she was. Then full consciousness returned, and she lay there wondering what had awakened her so suddenly and so completely.

Downstairs the big, hall-clock struck two. But except for that the house was completely silent. It could hardly have been any sound which had roused her.

Nicola threw off the one light cover she had, because it seemed unnaturally close in the room, and, deciding to open one of her windows still wider, she slipped out of bed and crossed the room.

It was a beautiful warm, starlit night, and a slice of moon was riding high in the sky. From the garden rose a heady confusion of scents from the flowers, cooling off after the heat of the day, and for a few minutes Nicola leaned her arms on the sill, and drew in long, deep breaths of the fragrant night air.

It was all so still and peaceful down below. Not a thing moved.

She leaned a little farther from the window, aware suddenly that something had moved. A shadow, just beyond the angle of the wall near the side door. And, as she watched—alert, a little apprehensive—it moved again, and she saw it was the shadow of someone standing there.

Nicola was not fanciful, but her heart gave a most disagreeable flutter, even while she told herself that Algernon or Vaughan must be having a last, late smoke before going to bed.

But she was not really satisfied with her own explanation, and for several long minutes she sat very still, not moving her gaze from that shadow, wondering what there was that she could, or should, do about it.

And then, so quickly that it had happened almost before she could note the fact, a man detached himself from the massed shadow near the house, and ran quickly and silently across the moonlit space beneath her window and vanished into the woods beyond.

It was not Algernon and it was certainly not Vaughan. And yet the figure was not entirely unfamiliar to her. She had seen him before, quite recently, she was sure. And then, too, he had been running.

She searched her memory anxiously, a little apprehensively.

And then suddenly she knew.

When she had seen him running before, he had been running from her towards a waiting car, parked outside a lonely cottage.

The man—if her imagination and the moonlight had not deceived her—was Frank Braydon.

CHAPTER VI

for several moments Nicola sat quite still by the window, staring at the place where she had seen Frank Braydon —if it were he—disappear. But there was no sign of his returning, and presently, in the not very remote distance, she heard a car being started up and driven away.

She relaxed her tense position then and rubbed her hand across her eyes.

Could she possibly have been mistaken?

Of the fact that someone had run across from the house to the trees there was no possibility of doubt. But—how sure could she be that the man had been Frank Braydon?

She shut her eyes and tried to see the figure exactly as it had impinged upon her consciousness in the few moments which had been needed for him to run across the moonlit strip to the trees.

Details—the small external trifles which serve usually to convince—were impossible to recapture. Only the general impression was there. And the general impression, her memory obstinately insisted, was unquestionably one of Frank Braydon.

Nicola got up from her chair, but it was impossible just to go back to bed as though nothing had happened, so she walked slowly up and down her room, trying to decide what she could or should do.

If it had been Ginette's erring husband, what on earth was he doing here? His position was an extremely doubtful one. It would be an exaggeration to say that he was wanted by the police, but the fact remained that he had earned himself a stinging official rebuke by failing to put in an appearance at court proceedings where he was required as a material witness.

True, they were miles away from the scene of the inquest now, but it was extraordinary behaviour, to say the least of it, to avoid the inquest yet haunt the place where all the principal actors in the drama were to be found.

And why? For what purpose?

Was he trying to see his child—to make some further attempt to get hold of her?

For a moment this slightly melodramatic idea so frightened Nicola that she had to remind herself sharply that he had run much too quickly and freely for a man who was carrying anything. Even so, she was not entirely satisfied until she had opened her door and gone softly into Belinda's room, to listen for a minute or two to the child's quiet, undisturbed breathing.

As she turned to go back to her room she saw that, late though it was, there was a line of light under old Mrs. Colwell's door, and the curious circumstance seemed to wander round and round in her brain, as though trying to fit into some explanation of the general puzzle.

Unless she had been putting on a magnificent—and surely unnecessary—act, the old lady detested her son-in-law. It was inconceivable then that he should have stolen in for a secret interview with her.

But—she was a strange woman, Nicola reminded herself, back in the sanctuary of her own room again. There was something not—Nicola groped for the right word—not altogether credible about her. As though, for some purpose of her own, she played an elaborate part.

Had she really feigned her hatred for her son-in-law in a deliberate attempt to lead people away from the fact that she was in league with him over something?

At this point Nicola laughed a little, and scolded herself for using such sensational expressions. Elderly, semi-invalid ladies were not apt to be "in league" with undesirable men. It was all rather absurd.

And yet, if Frank Braydon had really paid a nocturnal visit to the house, and the light was still on in Mrs. Colwell's room at this extraordinary hour, it was difficult not to feel that there must be a link between the two circumstances.

From thinking that Mrs. Colwell might have been an actor in some melodramatic plot and counter-plot, Nicola drifted into feeling a vague anxiety about the old lady. Was she perfectly all right, in that silent, lighted room, behind the heavy closed doors? Or had her son-in-law indeed paid her a visit, but an anything but friendly one?

Nicola had been too close to incredible happenings in the last few days to be able to banish anything from her mind as impossible and, unable to check the rising anxiety within her.

she slipped out of her room once more and went along the passage to Mrs. Colwell's room. She had not entered there since her first interview after her arrival, but the light was still on and, without hesitation, she tapped softly on the door.

It would have been difficult to say what she had worked herself up to expect, but certainly she was a good deal taken aback when a perfectly calm voice—though with a questioning note in it—said:

"Come in."

To retreat now was impossible, so Nicola entered the room.

Once more the old lady was lying propped up in bed, and an open book on the counterpane beside her seemed to suggest that she had merely been reading tranquilly when Nicola's knock came.

"I—I'm sorry if I disturbed you." Nicola stammered a little because she was beginning to feel rather foolish. "But I saw the light under your door and—it seemed so late for you to be awake. I—came to ask if you were all right."

"Perfectly all right, my dear, thank you." Those extraordinarily bright eyes rested not unkindly upon Nicola. "But it was very thoughtful of you to come and inquire."

"Not at all." Nicola spoke a trifle lamely. "There isn't anything I could get for you, is there?"

"Nothing, thank you. I often read late like this. Old people either require a great deal of sleep or very much less than you younger ones, you know."

"Do they?" Nicola smiled.

"Oh, yes. In fact, it is really more remarkable that you should have been awake at this time of night than that I should. How did you come to be awake and out in the passage, so that you could see my light?"

For a moment Nicola wondered if she could detect a suspicion of something more behind that than the simple query. But she dismissed the idea.

''Why, you see, I was a little anxious about Belinda, and I had gone ‑"

"My dear child, what a very disturbed and anxious night you seem to have had!"

There was no ignoring the sarcasm of that, and Nicola decided that she had better be frank. This was not the kind of old lady to be scared by the possibility of a burglar—or any other intruder.

"Mrs. Colwell, I did wake up about half an hour ago, and I went to my window to open it a little farther. While I was standing there, I saw a man run across from the shadow of the house to the trees on the north side of the garden, and I thought ‑"

"A man? What man?" inquired the old lady scornfully.

"That's just it. That was what made me anxious. No one in the house had any reason to do such a thing at this hour."

"Certainly not! What did he look like?"

Nicola hesitated a moment. Then she said gently:

"Mrs. Colwell, he looked very much like Frank Bray don to me."

"Nonsense!"

The old lady appeared to be more shocked than angry at such a notion, and she actually lost what little colour she usually had.

"Please don't upset yourself about it. I may have been mistaken, of course," Nicola explained earnestly. "I saw him for only a few seconds, and by moonlight, which is very deceptive. But"—her memory prodded her again and she could not conscientiously ignore it—"it was very much as he looked when he spoke to me outside the cottage and then ran across and jumped into his car. I think it was the way he ran which seemed so familiar to me."

"You're sure you didn't imagine this?"

"No. Of course not."

"Was there a car this time?"

"Oh, no. At least, not in the drive. I heard one started up some distance away a few minutes later. I suppose it was he driving off. It was then that I suddenly felt anxious about Belinda, and went to make sure that she was all right."

Mrs. Colwell bit her lip for a moment. Then she said:

"I think we are alarming ourselves quite unduly, Miss Martin. No doubt it was a tramp who had come wandering up to the house—they do sometimes—and the sound of your window scared him, and he ran away."

"And got into his car, Mrs. Colwell?" Nicola could not forgo a touch of good-humoured sarcasm in her turn.

But the old lady frowned extremely haughtily. She was not used to anyone having even a hint of fun at her expense.

"I see no reason why you need necessarily connect the two things. We are near enough to the highway for you to be able to hear any car which passes there, particularly on a still night like this."

"But it didn't pass," Nicola insisted. "It had been parked —an odd thing to be done with a car on a highway—and it was deliberately started up again."

"I'm afraid you have a rather youthful taste for sensation." Mrs. Colwell gave a thin smile. "But you mustn't try to alarm yourself or me about nothing."

"I wasn't trying to." Somehow Nicola swallowed her indignation and contrived to make herself sound perfectly pleasant and reasonable. "But, even if it were just a tramp— he didn't look a bit like one, by the way—then oughtn't we to make sure that he did stay outside? And that he hasn't been in and helped himself to anything? Would you like me to wake Mr. Colwell and ‑"

"Certainly not!"

In a tone of extreme authority the old lady stopped any notions of that sort, and she stared at Nicola almost as though she had made some improper suggestion.

"I'm sorry." Nicola was both amused and annoyed by the reaction. "I only thought ‑"

"Well, you've done quite enough thinking, my clear, for one night," Mrs. Colwell interrupted briskly. "I suggest that you go back to bed now and get some sleep. You need to be fresh and rested for your journey with Belinda tomorrow. Or, rather"—she glanced at the clock on her bedside table— "later today."

There seemed little else that Nicola could do.

"If you really feel there is no need to go into the matter further ‑"

"I do. And, what is more, I would prefer you not to mention this business to anyone," continued Mrs. Colwell firmly. "Not to anyone, you understand. Servants are very apt to exaggerate these half-fancied incidents, and they would be twittering and panicking in a very short time if you started spreading stories of mysterious strangers having been seen around the house."

"I shouldn't dream of doing such a thing," Nicola assured her, with indignant emphasis. "The only person I should have thought of informing would be Mr. Colwell."

"There is no need to do so," Mrs. Colwell replied tranquilly. "He has enough to worry him already. I, myself, will mention it to him if I think it necessary."

No useful purpose could be served by prolonging the interview further. So Nicola said good night and returned to her own room.

There—lying wakeful in her bed for some time—she could not help feeling that the whole incident had been either very stupid or very significant. If she had fancied the likeness to Frank Braydon, and if the intruder—tramp or otherwise—had gone away without doing any harm, then she supposed she had made rather an exaggerated fuss about things. On the other hand, if it .had been Frank Braydon, then something very curious was afoot. And not the least curious circumstance was the fact that old Mrs. Colwell was so determined that there should be no inquiry into what had' happened.

Nicola had by no means arrived at a satisfactory conclusion by the time she fell asleep again. But this did not prevent her sleeping soundly and waking with considerable enthusiasm for her journey with Belinda.

After breakfast, and before they made their final preparations, Vaughan Colwell called her into his study and gave her a very generous amount of money to cover Belinda's expenses and her own.

"There really isn't any need to make my expenses your concern, Mr. Colwell," she insisted with a smile. "This is a journey I should have to undertake on my own behalf, anyway. The only difference in my original plans is that I am taking Belinda with me."

"Strictly speaking perhaps," he agreed. "But we won't quibble over that, Miss Martin. And, by the way, I telephoned to Sir Geraint Eldon last night, and fully satisfied myself that you are a trustworthy and suitable person to take care of Belinda. I am sufficiently thankful to have her leave this place in your care at this time not to want to query any reasonable expense involved."

He spoke formally, though not unkindly. But he did not answer her smile. Indeed he looked pale and preoccupied, but as this was the day of his sister's funeral, Nicola supposed she need look no further than that for the explanation of his unsmiling pallor.

Belinda was full of good spirits and, as her unknowing laughter and chatter rang incongruously in that silent house, Nicola was glad when she was ready and it was time to go.

The child had, rather unwillingly, gone to say good-bye to her grandmother, and now she had only to say a few last words to her uncles, both of whom were standing in the hall, ready to see her off.

Since her uncle Vaughan was directly responsible for letting her go on this expedition with Nicola, Belinda looked on him with a much more friendly eye than usual. Perhaps that was why he kissed her good-bye, and she returned the kiss with some show of warmth.

With her younger uncle, . however, there was no hint of reserve. She flung her arms round him and hugged him.

"Will you still be here when I come back?" she wanted to know as he picked her up and kissed her.

"I don't expect so, Bell"—he was the only one who ever called her that, and it always brought a smile to her face—"I have to go to London almost immediately after—almost immediately," he corrected himself, but so lightly and quickly that she did not notice the significance of that.

What arrested her attention was the mention of London.

"To London, Uncle Algie? Why, we are going there, as soon as we have returned the car to Nicola's cousin. Perhaps we shall see you there."

"London's a pretty big place, sweetheart." Her uncle ruffled her hair teasingly.

"But we could arrange to meet, couldn't we?"

"Difficult in such a short time. Nicola will be busy, and so shall I."

"Oh"—Belinda pouted slightly, a small conceit which she practised only on her younger uncle—"well, at least you have Nicola's address in case you do have time?"

"I have Nicola's address," Uncle Algie agreed.

"And I know the name of your club, if we want to find you," declared Belinda.

Her uncle laughed rather sceptically—and just a little bit annoyedly, Nicola could not help thinking.

"Nonsense. Men never tell the name of their club to their girl friends," he declared.

"I do know it, I do!" chanted Belinda triumphantly. "It's 'The Fontenoy'. Because I heard you tell Felicity she could look you up there any time she was in London. And then I saw a photograph of it in the Sunday Times the very next day, and that was what made me remember it."

A moment of very peculiar silence fell upon the hall. Then Algernon Colwell said lightly:

"Little pitchers have long ears. And lively imaginations, too. There—go along with you." And he gave her a friendly push towards the open front door. Neither brother looked at the other.

Nicola said "Good-bye" in an impartial way to both of them, then, and she and Belinda went out to the car.

It was a bright, fine day, though rather cooler than the previous day, and as they drove away Belinda said:

"Isn't this nice? It's like going off to seek adventure."

Nicola laughed sympathetically.

"Is that how you feel about it? I always feel like that when I set off on a journey. My brother teases me about it and says I've never grown up beyond the fairy-tale age."

Belinda looked at her approvingly, and said:

"Have you got a brother? Tell me about him."

So Nicola amused her with an account of her brother and his family, and even promised that, if there was time, they might visit them, so that Belinda could have a little company of her own age.

"And I hope there will be time to see Uncle Algie, too." Belinda frowned slightly as she returned to the subject which her younger uncle had dismissed so casually. "I don't see how he could be too busy to see me. What do you suppose he does when he's in London?"

Nicola—who privately thought that a study of Algernon Colwell's activities in London, or anywhere else, might disclose some odd things—said that she could not imagine.

"And he needn't have been so funny about his club, either." Belinda sucked in her cheeks reflectively. "Of course it is 'The Fontenoy', and I did hear him tell Felicity so."

"Recently?" Nicola could not help inquiring, though it was certainly not her intention to question the child about the odd situation at Elm Court.

"Oh, yes. Just before you came."

"After she was engaged to Vaughan," thought Nicola, but she did not say so. Aloud she merely observed that lots of men preferred not to be disturbed when they were busy on their own affairs.

"But Uncle Algie is usually different," Belinda said naively. And Nicola laughed and changed the subject.

There was no need for them to hurry. They took their time, and Nicola found, as she had before, that Belinda was excellent company. Like most children who have been largely in the company of grown-ups, she was singularly precocious in some of her observations. But she had retained as well a most endearing childishness of outlook, and Nicola, who was extremely fond of children, greatly enjoyed answering her eager and intelligent questions, and took great pains to see that the little girl understood the explanations she gave.

They spent their first night in the charming market town in Herefordshire where Nicola's cousin lived. And, having returned the borrowed car, they went on to London by train the following day.

It was quite late in the afternoon when they arrived and, having bought some emergency provisions, they went straight to Nicola's flat. Belinda, used as she was to the rather oppressive size and magnificence of Elm Court, shrieked with delight over the small, bright, friendly rooms.

"Oh, Nicola, it's lovely! Oh, I'd love to live here," she cried, with a child's exaggerated delight in something she was discovering for the first time. "Couldn't we just leave Elm Court and come and live here? And we'd have Uncle Algie to stay sometimes."

Nicola said she was afraid this was an impracticable suggestion, but that as she was going to let the flat—not part with it—there would, no doubt, be occasions in the future when Belinda would be able to come and stay with her.

"But aren't you going to be at Elm Court always?" Belinda inquired shrewdly.

"Darling, no one makes plans for 'always'," Nicola pointed out equably. "But I shall certainly stay until your uncle marries Felicity."

"Oh, well—that's all right." Belinda seemed strangely easily satisfied by that. And the next moment she gave the reason for being so. "I don't think Felicity ever will marry him," she added casually.

"Belinda! You mustn't say things like that." Nicola sounded—and, indeed, was—shocked. "What makes you think such a thing?"

Belinda gave her one of those disconcertingly knowledgeable glances of which she was sometimes capable.

"I think it's Uncle Algie that Felicity really wants to marry," was what she said.

"Belinda!" Nicola was oddly dismayed. More dismayed, she realised, than she would have been if she had been a hundred per cent certain that Belinda was talking nonsense. "You haven't any real reason for saying that, have you?"

Belinda looked a trifle sulky.

"I'd rather marry Uncle Algie than Uncle Vaughan, any day," she declared.

Nicola laughed on a rather relieved note.

"Maybe. But that doesn't mean that Felicity feels that way."

"Well, I think she does," Belinda insisted obstinately. "And Uncle Algie thinks so, too. I heard him say so, the time he told her she could always find him at 'The Fontenoy' when he was in London."

"You mean he—he told Felicity that he thought she loved him rather than his brother?" Nicola was startled into saying.

"Yes. It was something about Uncle Vaughan having more money and owning Elm Court."

Nicola was shocked afresh—but whether by the fact that the words had been said or by the fact that this child had overheard them she was not quite sure. What she did know was that any further discussion of the incident must be prevented.

"Belinda, I hope and think you were mistaken in what you thought your uncle said," she declared. "But, if you're not, it was very wrong of him to say such a thing, even in a joke, and the sooner you forget it, the better."

"It wasn't meant for a joke," was all Belinda replied in a singularly obstinate tone.

"Well, I am quite sure Felicity didn't take it seriously, and you certainly mustn't either."

For once Nicola sounded as obstinate as Belinda herself, and the little girl looked visibly shaken.

"All right," she said at last. "Uncle Algie wouldn't do anything really wrong. And, if you say that's wrong, then perhaps I mistook what he said. Anyway, don't tell Uncle Vaughan."

"I shouldn't dream of doing sol" exclaimed Nicola, her hair almost rising on her head at the thought of undertaking such a task. "For my part, I shall just forget all about this conversation."

"All right," Belinda said again. "Unless Uncle Vaughan doesn't marry Felicity, after all," she added, with a sort of roguish persistence that was both charming and amusing.

Although Nicola had declared her intention of dismissing this talk from her mind, she was not, of course, capable of doing so. And, when Belinda was safely tucked away in bed in the little guest-room, she could not help going over and over what the child had told her.

That quotation from Uncle Algie had a disturbing ring of truth about it, and Belinda was an accurate child on the whole. In spite of her protests Nicola felt little doubt that Algernon Colwell had said something of the kind to Felicity. But whether in one of his fits of impudent teasing or whether in real earnest it was impossible to say.

She found, a little to her surprise, that she passionately disliked the idea that the smiling younger Colwell might be deceiving his brother and trying to make mischief between him and the girl he loved. She liked and respected Vaughan Colwell now to a degree she would never have thought possible when she first crossed swords with him; and she thought of him as the one reliable and understandable personality in a rather strange household.

She liked his occasional smile; she remembered with the deepest pleasure his kindness and care for her on the day of the inquest; and particularly her heart warmed to him when she thought of the way he had looked at Felicity. It was good to know that anyone could love in that whole-hearted, romantic way. Though it was a pity, she thought with a sigh, that it had to be largely wasted on a pretty, shallow creature who— if what Belinda thought was true—"did not even love him.

It was not often that Nicola felt frustrated or depressed. She was cheerful—even gay—and she took life very much as she found it. But just then she suffered some of those disillusioning moments which come to most of us at some time or another. She wished vaguely and uselessly that Vaughan Colwell could love someone worth while, who would make him happy. And she also wished that somewhere, some time in her life she would find a love like that. Because it had suddenly come to her, with almost frightening conviction, that to go through the years without experiencing such a love, in the fullest, most romantic sense, was probably to miss what was most worth knowing.

That brought her round to wondering if she had not carelessly lived her years without much real purpose in view.

What did she really want of life? she asked herself with almost passionate intensity. And, a good deal to her surprise, the answer which came back from her usually well-balanced, common-sense self was that she wanted to know romance and rapture and love, and that, up to now, she had known little of these things.

"Well, I'm committed to six months, at least, at Elm Court, for the time being," she reflected a little sardonically, "and there doesn't seem much chance of romance or rapture for me there."

But she remembered then that there would be Belinda, who needed her, and that she would be seeing Vaughan Colwell every day in a pleasant—though business-like—relationship. And, somehow, that reflection comforted her, and she decided before she fell asleep that life was not a completely empty business after all.

The next day, accompanied by Belinda, she visited one or two house agents, and arranged to make her flat available to let, furnished, during the next six months. Belinda took an enormous personal interest in the business, and completely delighted one agent by saying confidentially, "We only want nice people, you know, because it's a specially nice flat."

He gravely made an entry to that effect in his register, and assured Belinda that only the very nicest applicants for accommodation would be considered. And they left the office —Belinda, at least, completely satisfied of the agent's good intentions.

Nicola had intended to take her out to Kensington Gardens during the afternoon, but it was a strangely hot and oppressive day, and they had had a good deal of running about to do in the morning. After lunch Belinda showed such an overwhelming desire to sleep that Nicola decided to let the child rest on her bed during the afternoon, and possibly take her out in the cool of the evening.

There was plenty that she herself could attend to indoors, and she was not sorry to have a little time for packing up and sorting out things, unhindered by Belinda's eager but exacting inquiries.

Everything was very quiet in the flat, but it was a heavy, exhausting quiet, and, by the time Nicola had finished her work, she was longing for a cup of tea. She was all the more annoyed, therefore, to find that the milkman had overlooked her note saying that she was home once more and needed her milk delivered as usual.

There was a dairy less than five minutes away from the flat, and Nicola had often run down there in an emergency. But she was doubtful about leaving Belinda for even so short a time, at any rate without letting her know.

Tiptoeing along to the little girl's room, she peeped in. Belinda was so deeply asleep that it would have been unkind to wake her, and it was obviously in the last degree improbable that she would wake of her own accord during the short time that Nicola would be away.

Deciding to. take the small risk, Nicola let herself quietly out of the flat, and set off for the dairy as fast as the hot afternoon would permit. Even so, her conscience troubled her long before she reached the shop, and she was telling herself that she ought not to have taken, even the smallest risk of Belinda waking and finding herself alone.

The little dairy was unusually crowded and, during the delay before she was served, Nicola had time to regret her impulse a hundred times, even while her common sense told her that she was agitating herself about a complete improbability.

When she had been served, however, and was able to hurry homeward, her anxiety died down, particularly when she recollected how soundly Belinda had been sleeping when She left her.

All the same, when she had climbed the stairs to her flat once more and quietly opened the front door, she was a good deal relieved that no frightened, demanding Belinda rushed to greet her. The flat was just as quiet as when she had left it, and Nicola went through to the little kitchen to put on the kettle.

She prepared the tea in a rather leisurely way and, when it was ready, went to see if Belinda were stirring yet. If they both had their tea now, there would be plenty of time to go to the gardens and enjoy the early evening there. It might even be better to wake Belinda, rather than let her sleep long enough to ‑

With the most dreadful sensation of cold panic, Nicola stood rooted in the doorway, staring into a completely empty room.

Belinda was gone, and only the tumbled bed-clothes showed that she had ever been there.

CHAPTER VII

the half-hour which succeeded her discovery of Belinda's disappearance was so terrible that, even years afterwards, Nicola could not recall it without horror.

She ran from room to room of the flat, crying uselessly, "Belinda, where are you? Darling, are you hiding somewhere? Belinda, answer me!"

And all the time she knew that the child could not be anywhere within the small space of the flat. And all the time agonising remorse for her ten minutes of thoughtlessness pursued her.

How could she have dreamed of going out and leaving the child alone, even behind a locked door? Why had she not continued to attach a dangerous significance to the nocturnal visitor at Elm Court? How could she ever have dismissed from her mind as stupidly sensational the idea that someone might have some overwhelming interest in removing Belinda?

She had left the child unattended. And for what?

For a miserable drop of milk, so that she could drink tea when she was hot and thirsty. What a preposterous, pitiful reason for courting danger! Why couldn't she have drunk her tea without milk—or had water—or almost choked with thirst, rather than have left Belinda alone?

In the light of what had happened, her early uneasiness— at which she had afterwards laughed—now seemed only the natural promptings of common sense, and she would never forgive herself for having ignored them.

But it was not only she who would never forgive herself, she remembered suddenly. Self-condemnation was one thing—but it was not the only thing. What was Mrs. Colwell—what was Vaughan Colwell—going to say to her for having failed so lamentably in her trust?

At the thought of this, Nicola went as cold as she had previously been hot, and she felt the perspiration standing out in beads of moisture on her chilling forehead. A few tears, too, mingled with the trickles of sweat which ran down her frightened face. Then she pulled herself together, wiped her eyes, and, in a forlorn attempt to try anything, went across the landing to knock on the door of the flat facing hers.

It was opened at once by her neighbour—a business girl like herself, whom she knew slightly—and, since she had her hat on, it was obvious that she had either just come in or was just going out.

"Have you seen Belinda—the little girl who was staying with me?" gasped Nicola distractedly. "She's gone."

"How do you mean—gone?" The girl put her hand on Nicola's arm, and tried to draw her into the small hall. "Don't look like that. Kids of that age often give one the slip. Let me get you some tea or something. You look as though you're going to faint."

"It's all right. I'm not going to faint." Nicola resisted the attempt to persuade her to enter. "And I don't want any tea, thank you." She shuddered with remorseful loathing. "Only I must find Belinda. You see, I went out and left her asleep for ten minutes. And now she's gone—she's gone."

"Perhaps she woke and was frightened, and came to look for you."

"I don't think so. At least ‑" For a moment Nicola snatched at the poor comfort of that suggestion, but she dismissed it again almost immediately. "No, no. I was away such a short time. I should have met her if she had been walking' on her own. Please think! Did you hear anyone knock on my door about half an hour ago?"

"My dear, I've only just come in." Her neighbour was sympathetic, but unable to offer any practical help. "But if you say she hadn't time to walk off ‑"

"Someone must have fetched her away. In a car."

Nicola saw a dawning expression of incredulity on the rather pretty face opposite her. Something which seemed to suggest that for the first time her neighbour was regarding her as someone a little hysterical, who probably made a great fuss about nothing.

"Oh, you know, really that's most unlikely. I mean—these things don't happen, outside gangster films," protested the other girl. "It's terribly frightening when the little wretches do this sort of thing, but most children get the wanderlust once in a while. Honestly, I think you're terrifying yourself unnecessarily. I bet you anything she just slipped off when your back was turned. Was—I mean, is she a nervous child?"

"No. She's a most self-reliant little thing," Nicola said dully.

"There you are then! It probably wasn't even a case of her being frightened at finding herself alone. She was rather thrilled, I shouldn't wonder, and slipped out to have a look round on her own. I tell you what: I'll come down with you now, and you go one way and I'll go the other. I'm sure we'll find her with her nose glued to a shop window, or something of the sort."

Nicola was quite, quite sure they would not. But it was better to do something rather than nothing. And this girl just might, conceivably, be right. It was something, anyway— some sort of support—to have another person helping and reassuring like this. And it was kind of her to offer to come out when she had presumably only just got in after a day at her office.

So they went down to the street together. And, after Nicola had described Belinda minutely and the other girl had said that she was sure she remembered seeing her the previous day, they separated and went their different ways, searching— searching for a little girl with thick dark hair and a red-and-white print frock.

For ten minutes—quarter of an hour—half an hour, they searched, coming back at intervals to report and consult. They asked in most of the shops, but no one had seen a little girl answering to that description. They even asked the policeman on point duty if there had been any accident. But he reassured them on that point, though he could not recall having seen a child answering to their description of Belinda.

"But, of course, there's dozens of kiddies about this time in the afternoon," he said. "Ring up the station and let them know. They'll tell you if any lost children have been brought in."

"She wouldn't get lost. She isn't that kind of child," Nicola protested hopelessly. "She could give her address as clearly as I could."

But, all the same, when they had returned home completely convinced that there was no sign of Belinda in the neighbourhood, Nicola did telephone to the police station to inquire— fruitlessly—and then to give a description of Belinda.

A rather fatherly voice assured her that hundreds of children contrived to get lost every day, and that they always turned up again.

"We'll bring the little girl along as soon as we locate her," the voice promised. And for five minutes Nicola felt some sort of hope and reassurance.

It was nearing six o'clock by now, and reluctantly her neighbour told her that she could not stay to help any longer.

"I have an appointment, and I can't put it off," she explained apologetically.

"Why, of course!" Nicola clasped her hand gratefully. "You've been so good already. There really isn't anything else we can do anyway—except wait. Please do go and keep your appointment. And I—I hope that by the time you come home Belinda, too, will be back."

"I hope so. I'm sure she will be."

Nicola very slightly shook her head, but it was an instinctive gesture, more for herself than for anyone else.

It arrested the attention of the other, girl, however, even as she was turning away, and she came back to stand by Nicola's chair, looking down at her.

"What made you so certain from the beginning that this wasn't just another case of a naughty, adventurous child running off on her own? You haven't really had any hope all along that we should find her, have you?"

Nicola shook her head again.

"It's because of some—some complications in her family," she explained hoarsely. "I'm nearly sure that—that one member of the family wants to take her away from the others."

"Good heavens!" Her companion looked startled. "Then oughtn't you to get in touch with the rest of the family at once?"

"They aren't in London."

"But you could telephone, perhaps?"

"Y-yes. If I don't hear anything soon from the police, I'll put through a long-distance call."

"I certainly should! It will lessen your own sense of responsibility."

It would also, thought Nicola, when she had been left alone, involve a perfectly terrible conversation with Vaughan Colwell, in which she would have to admit that she had left Belinda alone in the flat for a while.

Distractedly Nicola tried to think of words in which to tell him what had happened. She tried to imagine his reaction, his reply. Then she told herself that he might not be at home. He might well be with Felicity, and then it would be Mrs. Colwell who would reply to the telephone call.

Little though she liked the old lady, and slightly scared of her as she was, Nicola thought she would rather have to tell her than Vaughan.

Neither experience would be pleasant. The best would be if the easy-going, tolerant Algernon replied. But he was most unlikely to be at home. He had already told Belinda that he was probably going to London.

With a cry of relieved recollection, Nicola suddenly sprang to her feet and seized the telephone directory. He was possibly in London now! Quite likely within reach. And, for all his easy, teasing good nature, he was fond enough of his niece to come immediately to her aid. Algernon Colwell was the man to help and advise her, and he had laughed and not actually denied it when Belinda had said he was usually to be found at "The Fontenoy".

Rapidly Nicola turned the pages of the directory, with a hand that trembled slightly, and, when she came to the Fs, she ran an agitated finger up and down the columns until she found what she wanted.

Her heart was beating hopefully as she fumblingly dialled the number, and, during the few seconds before a voice informed her that this was "The Fontenoy Club", she prayed frantically that Algernon Colwell would be there.

"Mr. Colwell? He was here ten minutes ago, but I think he went out. I'll inquire for you," the voice said politely in answer to her slightly incoherent inquiries.

At least he was in London! Even if he were out at present, surely, surely he could be reached somewhere. At any rate, he would come back some time tonight. Though a certain flutter of misgiving told her that Algernon Colwell was not the kind who kept early hours.

A few more moments ticked past, bringing with them fresh alternations of hope and despair. Then she heard the receiver being picked up again, and Algernon's pleasant voice said:

"Hallo. This is Colwell speaking."

"Mr. Colwell!" For a moment there was a choking sensation in her throat, and tears of relief and distress forced themselves into her eyes.

"Nicola, is that you?" he asked doubtfully as she paused to recover herself.

"Yes. I—had to get in touch with you. Something dreadful has happened. Belinda has disappeared!"

"What?"

His one horrified exclamation recalled her to the fact that she had not in any way prepared him for this shock, and she hastily began to explain something of what had happened.

Almost immediately, however, he cut across what she was saying.

"When did you say she disappeared?"

"About four o'clock."

"Good God! And you've left it until now to call me up?"

"It was only five minutes ago that I remembered you might be in London. And it was only by the merest chance that I knew where to find you."

"Yes, all right, all right. I'd forgotten that." It was the first time she had ever heard a note of impatience in his usually rather lazy voice. "Well, I'll see about it."

"Do you mean you'll come along here?"

"No. I'll find her."

"But how?"

"You leave that to me."

"But, listen!" she cried, aware that he was about to ring off. "I've tried all the obvious things already. Don't you think I ought to ring up your brother at Elm Court and tell ‑"

"No! For heaven's sake don't let us make more of a mess of things than has been made already. You're not to telephone Elm Court; do you understand?"

"I can't put it off indefinitely. They have every right to know if ‑"

"Don't do anything until you've seen me, then."

"All right." She was reluctant to concede even so much. But he had accepted her agreement almost before it was out of her mouth, and the next second Nicola heard him replace the receiver at his end.

Immediately she then thought of a dozen things she wanted to ask him. But perhaps it was just as well that she should delay him no longer in his efforts to find Belinda.

He had been extraordinarily confident in his choice of words. "I'll find her," he had said, almost as though he could go straight to the place where she was and just fetch her back. Almost, thought Nicola disturbedly, as though he knew where he might find her.

She pushed back her damp hair wearily and told herself that she was imagining the most ridiculous things. But it was hard to banish the impression entirely and, as she forced herself to eat and drink a little and then set about preparing a meal against the possibility of a tired and hungry Belinda being restored to her, she turned over and over in her mind just what Algernon Colwell had said.

Why that almost passionate insistence on her having no communication with Elm Court? Her slightest suggestion of doing such a thing had jerked a violent refusal from him. And yet, if Belinda were not soon restored, it was her absolute duty to let the rest of the family know.

Nicola wished now that she had not given any undertaking about not telephoning. She had been hypnotised by Algernon's positive manner, and a little bit by his own confidence that he could find Belinda and stop the trouble going any further.

And what made him so confident of that? He had not even asked what methods she herself had tried. Nor had he asked if she had any theory about the reason for Belinda's disappearance.

"They're too much for me, this family," Nicola said aloud with a deep sigh. "There's something strange about them all. And they seem to attract violent happenings, as a magnet attracts needles."

But, oh, she didn't mind how strange and inexplicable Algernon Colwell's behaviour was, if only he brought Belinda back to her. Poor little Belinda, who must also be frightened and distressed by now!

Nicola looked at the clock. It had been just after six when she had telephoned to Algernon. Now it was nearly eight, and there was no sign of him. How long did she have to give him, before she could consider herself free of her promise not to telephone to Vaughan? Would he come to see her, anyway, successful or unsuccessful? She had been stupid not to arrange that with him before he rang off. But he had been too quick for her. Quick enough to stampede her into doing something she now thought wrong and foolish.

And suppose—since no detail now seemed too fantastic to include in the web of events which enmeshed her—suppose he, too, had a part in this—this abduction? Had he simply trapped her into doing nothing until it should be too late to do anything?

With a sick wave of panic she wondered if she had merely involved herself more hopelessly—merely made the story which she would eventually have to tell more incredibly stupid and reprehensible. If Algernon simply never came near her, it was going to be very difficult to explain why she just sat there in her flat for nearly two hours doing nothing.

"But he didn't know about Belinda, he didn't!" she assured herself wildly. "He sounded astonished and appalled when I told him. I'm sure he—he's on our side."

With this she comforted herself for another ten minutes. But after that the strain grew too much for her. Either she must telephone to Vaughan Colwell, making a full confession and asking for his advice, or she would go mad with remorse and anxiety and wretchedness just sitting there.

She had even stretched out her hand for the telephone when there was a long ring at her door-bell.

Torn between hope and the deepest fear she had known yet, Nicola rose and almost tottered into the little hall. She flung open the door. And there stood Algernon Colwell, holding a half-sleeping Belinda in his arms.

"Belinda!" cried Nicola with a sob. And she was ashamed to remember afterwards that she embraced them both.

"Where have you been, darling?" She tried to take the little girl from Algernon. But he shouldered his way into the flat and said with a reassuring grin:

"She's all right, but don't start questioning her yet."

"I'm hungry," announced Belinda, struggling to the surface of consciousness. "Oh, Nicola, I'm so hungry. And I'm so glad to see you."

"I'll get you something to eat." Nicola thought if she once started to say how glad she was, in her turn, to see Belinda she would break down and cry helplessly. "I expect you could do with something, too," she added over her shoulder to Algernon.

"Presently. We'll get Belinda fed and tucked away in bed first."

"Yes, of course."

She knew from the glance he gave her that she was not to ask any questions at all yet, but that he tacitly promised to give her some sort of explanation later. And, though she felt weak and completely unstrung, she hurried into the kitchen and prepared a tray of supper for Belinda, not able to restrain a few happy tears of relief as she did so.

When she came back into the sitting-room Belinda was at the table, her chin propped on her hands, and a very drowsy air about her.

"Just eat some of this, darling." Nicola sat down beside her, and fed her almost like a baby. And, when she saw Belinda's eyelids grow unbearably heavy, she picked her up in her arms and carried her into the bedroom, where she undressed her, washed her and put her to bed, with hardly a word, save for an occasional endearment.

Only when she saw Belinda lying safely asleep again in her bed did she dare to think for a moment of all she had gone through since last she had seen the child there.

"Well?" Algernon looked up from a perusal of the newspaper to smile at her when she came back into the sitting-room. "Safely asleep now, is she?"

"Yes, thank heaven! And thank you," Nicola added fervently. "How on earth did you know where to find her?"

"It's quite a story. D'you think we might have some of that supper you offered me before we get down to explanations?"

"Why, yes, of course!"

It was a reasonable enough request, and Nicola went willingly to prepare the meal. But, as she did so, she could not entirely escape the impression that Algernon was quite pleased to put off what he had to say for a little while longer.

As she came in and out from the kitchen he addressed odd, careless remarks to her. And presently he came and carried a tray in for her.. But none of his remarks touched on the one subject which must, she felt, be absorbing all his thoughts as well as hers.

Finally, when they were seated either side of the round table with an appetising meal steaming between them, she could contain herself no longer, and exclaimed:

"Now you must tell me, even if it interrupts your meal to do so. Where was she, anyway? Tell me that at least."

"With her father, of course," he replied, so casually that she cried:

"Then it was he at Elm Court that night!"

"What night?" He glanced at her with narrowed eyes. But almost immediately he relaxed his expression and said, indicating his plate, "This is good."

"Is it? I'm glad."

"But what were you saying about Frank being at Elm Court?" The tone was quite casual again.

She told him then—rapidly but fully—about her looking from her bedroom window in the middle of the night and seeing a man who looked like Frank Braydon run across from the shadow of the house to the woods beyond.

"Did you tell anyone about this?" He was curiously still, though he did not bother to look at her.

"Your mother. She was awake and I saw the light in her room. So I went to see if she was all right, and she questioned me about being awake at that hour."

"Did you tell her you thought it was Frank?"

"Oh, yes."

"And what did she say?"

"That she was sure I was mistaken and that it must have been a tramp who had wandered up to the house and run away scared when he heard me open my window."

He gave a slight laugh. A curiously relieved laugh, Nicola thought. Only she told herself that must have been her imagination.

"I expect she was right."

"I am sure she was not!" retorted Nicola indignantly. "I ought not to have let her persuade me to keep silent about it. I ought to have told your brother in the morning and ‑"

"No. Not my brother," Algernon said softly.

"I don't know why not. And, anyway, if I hadn't been half persuaded that I was being fanciful and silly, I should have been more on my guard about Belinda, and this dreadful experience would never have happened."

"Maybe."

She was exasperated by his good-humoured calm.

"Why do you say it was impossible that the man who came to Elm Court was Frank Braydon, when your first thought on hearing of Belinda's disappearance was that he had taken her? And you were right, too."

"I didn't say it was impossible that your night intruder was Frank. I said I doubted it. I don't think he would have come to Elm Court for that ‑"

"For what, then?"

He shrugged.

"What I meant to say was that I don't think he would have come to Elm Court at such a time for anything. I may be wrong, of course. And, if he did come, no doubt he came for Belinda."

"But what is his idea? Why does he want to get hold of her?"

"You don't think fatherly affection is enough to explain his actions?" He smiled, but with considerable cynicism.

"No, I do not. .No father with real affection for his child would have left her alone that night in the cottage with a dead woman and a complete stranger."

"That's true, I suppose. But 1 imagine he was a pretty frightened man that night, Nicola."

"Frightened!" Nicola spat out the word contemptuously. "When you're frightened, your first fear should be for your children. Anyway, if he loved her, why didn't he take her with him then? Why stage this elaborate abduction now?"

"If he had taken Belinda with him, I imagine, he argued that he would be easier to trace, and I suppose at that time he was not at all sure that he would not be wanted for some sort of complicity in Ginette's death."

"Very well," Nicola said contemptuously still. "He was frightened for his skin, and he left her behind to heaven knows what sort of shock and terror, rather than face the music which he himself had caused. Then why try for her now?"

"My dear Nicola"—Algernon Colwell smiled across the table at her suddenly, in a way that reminded her how pretty she could look at certain times—"there is a great deal of money involved, you know."

"Money? Where Belinda is concerned?"

"Oh, certainly. When my father died, he left the estate to my mother, and his fortune—a considerable one—to be divided equally between her and us. Ginette was a rich woman in her own right. Belinda will naturally be the same. I don't say that is the only attraction in Frank's eyes. In fact, I am sure it is not. Unlike you, I am willing to give him credit for some family feeling. But, with both ties of family affection and considerable money involved, I see why he is anxious to regain the custody of his only daughter."

Nicola stared across at Mm; her lips parted.

"But no court would award him the custody of Belinda in the circumstances. He could hardly hope to handle her money, then," she protested.

"The expressed wishes of the child are always taken into consideration in these cases," Algernon reminded her dryly. "Provided, of course, there is nothing actually criminal charged against one or other of the parents. I imagine Frank's idea was that, if he could have Belinda to himself for a while, he could soon make her prefer his company to that of—Vaughan, shall we say? He is a person of some charm, you know."

Nicola was silent for several moments, thinking over what he had said. Then she raised her eyes and looked at him curiously.

"You know an extraordinary amount about him, don't you?"

He shrugged.

"I told you before—he has been a friend of mine for some years."

"I don't admire your taste," she said bitterly, still smarting from the misery Frank Braydon had made her endure.

"It isn't necessary that you should," he assured her good-naturedly.

"But how can you talk tolerantly of a man who has done what he did today? I won't say anything of what I endured, though I would rather lose my life's savings than go through that again. But imagine what misery he was callously building up for your mother—your brother—possibly Belinda herself."

"He has no reason to be fond of my mother or my brother," Algernon pointed out dryly. "And, of course, he thought he could make it up to Belinda for any fright or disappointment she suffered."

"Did you talk the whole thing over with him, that you're so well informed?" demanded Nicola sharply.

"No, my dear. But I flatter myself I know human nature pretty well."

"But what did he say—what excuses did he make—when you turned up at wherever he is and demanded Belinda?"

"He didn't make any excuses, of course. He didn't think they were required. I convinced him that what he was doing was utterly useless, and much more likely to harm his cause than help it. When my arguments had prevailed, I was able to take Belinda away again. That's all."

"But it's monstrous!" cried Nicola. "Oh, not only what he did, but that you should take it all as almost natural behaviour. Aren't you, as Belinda's uncle, simply outraged at what he did?"

He smiled and slightly shook his head.

"I imagine the ethics of the case would always trouble you a great deal more than me," he said almost kindly. "I don't attempt to excuse what he did. Let us say I understand his motives better than you, while by no means admiring them. And, after all, the whole thing is over now, without any real harm having been done." Can't we leave it at that?"

"Leave it at that?" Nicola repeated in an almost stupefied tone. '' Your niece has been more or less abducted and brought back only with the greatest difficulty and after the most agonising anxiety, and you ask if we can't 'leave it at that'? What do you think I am made of?. What sort of fool do you suppose I am? Why, I shan't have a quiet moment, even now, until I have restored Belinda to your brother's care and told him the whole story."

"No." Algernon said in that almost gentle tone he had used before. "You must not tell my brother."

"Of course, I must! Do. you suggest I should leave him in ignorance of the fact that Belinda is in some danger from her worthless father every time she is left alone?"

"There will be no other attempt to take her."

"How do you know that?" demanded Nicola scornfully.

"You must take my word for it. I can give it with absolute conviction. Belinda will be left quite unmolested henceforward. You need have no fears on that score."

"I'm sorry." Nicola set her mouth. "I don't share your confidence about that. And, even if I did, I should feel it my duty to tell your brother what had happened. I couldn't possibly let such a thing go unreported."

"Your duty!" Algernon laughed softly and a little scornfully in his turn. "Most of the cruel and thoughtless things in this world have been done in the name of duty."

"That simply isn't true, and you know it. Belinda has been trusted to my care. I must tell your brother truthfully what happened while she was in my care—including the fact that I failed to guard her properly at one point."

He glanced at her curiously.

"Don't you think that, for that reason alone, it would be wiser to remain silent?"

"Certainly not! I'd rather face up to the consequences of my own faults. I'm not a Frank Braydon."

He laughed again, with a note of something like admiration in the sound.

"You're quite charming. But I ask you as a deep, personal favour—a favour to the person who has restored Belinda to you—not to mention this matter to my brother."

She was shaken for a moment, remembering that she owed to him the ending of her agony of anxiety. But she could not yield. And after a moment he saw that she had not changed.

He got up and, thrusting his hands into his pockets, strolled over to the window and stood looking out. When he spoke at last, he did so without turning.

"Suppose I were to tell you that, if you insist on stirring up this whole business with my brother, it will mean a great deal of trouble—possibly danger—for me. Does that make any difference?" he asked quietly.

CHAPTER VIII

Nicola stared at Algernon Colwell's broad, straight back, and moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue.

"What—on earth—do you mean?" she asked at last, and her voice was slightly husky.

"Exactly what I say, of course. My God!" he exclaimed, on a note of nervous impatience which she had never heard in his voice before. "Do you suppose one plays with words at a time like this?" He swung round to face her suddenly, and she saw that his expression was hard and unsmiling, and that he looked very much as she had sometimes seen his brother look. "I tell you, if you insist on dragging Vaughan into this, you will expose me to heaven knows what unpleasantness and—yes, very likely to danger, too."

Nicola hesitated. She had always liked, though not altogether trusted, this man, and she felt an almost overwhelming impulse to agree to the course he was so urgently pressing upon her. At that moment she would have given a good deal to have been able to say that she would do what he wanted, if only to see relief dawn in his eyes and the ready smile return to his lips.

But she could not. She had failed in the exact discharge of her duty once already that day, and paid terribly. It was simply not in her to do what Algernon Colwell asked of her. Certainly not without some further explanation.

"I'm very sorry," she said at last, and she hated to see how his face darkened. "But you must, in all reason, see that what you're asking me to do is impossible."

"No. Difficult, if you like. And, perhaps, at first appearance, unreasonable. But I thought"—he smiled faintly and with charming ruefulness—"I had given you a not bad reason for doing it, in spite of that."

Nicola bit her Up.

"You've spoken in a general—and really very disquieting— way about the unpleasantness and danger I might cause by doing what seems to me the only right thing to do," she corrected. "But, Mr. Colwell, you must see that that in itself isn't very reassuring. Your strange choice of words and arguments only make me all the more convinced that we're involved in some very peculiar situation. That being so, I can't see that it could be right for me to conceal from my employer ‑"

"Your employer?"

"Yes, of course. Your brother has employed me, and employed me in a position of trust. I must tell him of anything strange or disquieting which occurred during the discharge of that trust. You do see that, don't you?" she said almost beseechingly.

"I see that's how it must seem to you," he replied rather moodily. Then he smiled at her again and said, "You don't believe that it can sometimes be best to commit a small wrong in order to prevent a greater one?''

She shook her head.

"I think," she retorted dryly, "that's probably the most dangerous argument there is. It's so wonderfully convenient, you know. And very, very seldom admissible."

He laughed then, and there was a touch of his usual gaiety in the laugh.

"You're too literal and logical for me," he declared. "Then you absolutely refuse to help me out of an awkward situation?"

"If by 'helping you but of an awkward situation' you mean concealing all this from your brother—I'm afraid I must."

"Well, from my point of view, the ideal would have been to have you say nothing at all," he agreed. "But, if your tender conscience won't let you agree to that, will you at least undertake to make as little of this as possible?"

Nicola looked at him doubtfully.

"It's going to be rather difficult to ‑"

"My sweet child, stop being so hard and determined!" he cried, laughing and catching her by the hand. "It doesn't suit your type of looks in the least. Don't you ever allow a, few concessions and indulgences? Do you always live by the exact letter of the law and the golden rules of the angels?"

"Of course not!" Nicola flushed a little, but whether because of the way he held her hand or because she resented being classed as too good to be true she was not quite sure. "I'm only trying to do what seems right to me in a position of some responsibility, and after having had the most dreadful fright through having failed a little in my duty already."

"Poor little Nicola!'' He actually ruffled her hair indulgently, as though she had been Belinda. "I'm afraid we're a sad, bad lot for you to deal with. I'm honestly not trying to lead you along some wide and wicked path of deception. Only, it can't have escaped your notice that our family isn't exactly a united one, and you must admit that perhaps an outsider might make rather a hash of things, with the best intentions in the world."

Nicola's heart smote her. He looked at her with such kindly, quizzical eyes, and his hand held hers in such a warm, firm clasp. It was hard not to feel that she was the one who was being unreasonable and difficult, the one who was creating complications where none existed.

But common sense—that most blessed anchor in a sea of emotion and doubt—kept her from being swept away.

She returned the pressure of his hand, it was true. But that was instinctive, and partly to soften the seeming obstinacy of her mood. Her words, however, were still the expression of her head rather than her heart, her sense of logic rather than her emotions.

"Mr. Colwell ‑"

"Algernon will do very nicely. An odious name, but mine own."

She smiled slightly.

"Very well—Algernon. You mustn't think that I want to interfere in your private family affairs at all, and I'm sure you're right when you say a stranger ‑"

"No, no, you're not a stranger! Merely outside the immediate family circle."

"Well, an outsider, then, could only do harm by interfering. But I am here to look after Belinda. Something very strange happened to her while she was in my care. And I intend to tell her present guardian so, when I return her to his care. And nothing has confirmed me more thoroughly in that attitude than your saying that, if I did this or that, some sort of danger might be involved. Danger of that sort just doesn't happen to ordinary people in ordinary circumstances, you know. Frankly, I don't like either what has happened, or your comments on it. The one makes me feel as uneasy as the other."

"That so?" He smiled at her reassuringly, but she was only partially convinced. "Then I'm sorry I ever brought that argument up."

"But you did bring it up," she insisted gently. "And, of course, I can't help wondering what danger there could possibly be for you. Did you mean—danger from your brother?"

"No, of course not. Except in so far as his inquiries, pressed to their ultimate limit, might turn up very much more than I want to have revealed."

She looked at him with a .sort of naive shrewdness.

"Do you mean that you've done something you don't want him to find out—something wrong?"

He laughed protestingly.

"You're sweet! You don't suppose everyone is as easily and unquestioningly good as you are, do you?"

"I'm not easily and unquestioningly good!" Nicola exclaimed rather indignantly. "But I do know this—that if one has done wrong and recognises it, the only common-sense thing, apart from anything else, is to undo it as quickly as possible."

He didn't laugh at her that time. He let go her hand and toned away.

"You wouldn't know, of course—everything is so simple and clear-cut for you. But for some people there is no way back."

"Nonsense! That isn't true!" She caught him by the arm in her eagerness. "You mustn't say anything like-that. It's so—so defeatist and—hopeless."

"And you can't imagine a situation without hope?" He smiled down at her, but rather bitterly.

"I—don't think so. I certainly don't believe that one can't—can't go back, as you say."

He patted her hand as it rested on his arm.

"All right. May you never find yourself half-way along a road where you can't retrace your steps," he said almost lightly. "And now let's forget most of the things we have said tonight."

"But ‑"

"If you won't agree to forget them—or at least never to say a word about them—I can't continue to regard you as a friend. And I'd like to have you for a friend, Nicola."

"You have!" she exclaimed, impulsively, and she put her hand into his again—but this time only to exchange a firm, almost hard, handclasp. "And I promise not to repeat a word of what you said tonight."

"Good girl!"

"I'll even try to make as little as possible of the—the disappearance, if that's really of some use to you."

"I'd be glad." He smiled at her. "And don't make too much of all this in your own mind, either."

"I'll do my best not to."

"Thank you." He touched her cheek with his finger. It was almost a caress—near enough to a kiss to make her colour. But she felt it was impossible to resent it. "When do you go back home?"

"The day after tomorrow. I ought to have been able to make all the arrangements about my flat by then."

"Fine," he said, but there was a slightly absent air about him now, and she was not surprised when he glanced at the clock and said that he must go.

"I'm afraid all this must rather have spoilt your plans for the evening." She came with him to the door.

"Never mind. There's nothing about this evening that I regret."

She almost found herself saying that she felt that way, too. But then she remembered what misery and anxiety she had suffered that evening, and she retained enough common sense not to echo his remark. Instead she said good-bye, without even asking when she was likely to see him again.

And then he was gone, and she was back in her deserted dining-room again, with nothing to do but clear away the supper things and wash up—and speculate on all the incredible things that had happened since she went out to buy that innocent drop of milk.

She tiptoed in and had a look at the sleeping Belinda, perhaps just to convince herself that the child was still safely under her roof again. Then she conscientiously washed up everything, without even yielding to the ever-present and insidious temptation to leave a saucepan in soak, on the entirely specious reasoning that it would be easier to wash in the morning. And finally she relaxed in an arm-chair, with her feet up on a foot-stool, and smoked, for her, a rare cigarette, and allowed herself to feel that life had reverted to normal.

"I wish I understood more than half of what Algernon Colwell said this evening," she mused, but without really worrying much about it, because she felt that, after her recent experiences, it was impossible to worry deeply about anything less than murder, or at least robbery with violence. "I suppose he has got himself involved in some silly, discreditable affair— either with a woman, or in connection with his money affairs."

Then she remembered what he had said about their all having been left a good deal of money by their father, and she wondered idly if Algernon were what one would call a rich and eligible bachelor. But something told her that unless the late Mr. Colwell had died rather recently, the younger Colwell had probably managed to get through a good deal of his share of the money.

And after that she went to bed.

The next morning Belinda, who seemed none the worse for her experiences, was quite willing to discuss her adventure over the breakfast table. Ordinarily, Nicola would have been anxious to hear every detail. But, remembering what Algernon had said about wanting her to make as little of the business as possible, she tried to confine her questions to absolute essentials, and to adopt a matter-of-fact air which would reduce any tendency of Belinda's to dramatise the whole thing.

"I was t'rrifically surprised when I went to the door and saw who was there," Belinda explained. "I'd let him knock twice because, you see, I thought you were home. Where were you, by the way?" she asked suddenly, as though that had just occurred to her.

Nicola explained about the milk, and added that she blamed herself very much for having left Belinda.

"Oh, I shouldn't have minded, if I'd known," Belinda assured her easily. "But when he said"—Nicola noticed again how Belinda never spoke of her father as though she really believed he had anything to do with her—"when he said you were downstairs waiting in the car, of course I came with him."

"He said that?" With difficulty Nicola suppressed her extreme rage at the thought of her name being taken in vain in this despicable manner.

"Oh, yes. Or else I shouldn't have gone, you know."

"Well, please remember in future, darling, that I should never, never send anyone to you with a message like that. I should always come and fetch you myself. Don't ever believe anyone who claims to come from me and wants to fetch you away."

"But it wouldn't happen again, anyway, would it?" pointed out the literal-minded Belinda.

"No. Of course not," agreed Nicola. And to herself she added grimly, "At least, I hope not."

"Of course, I didn't know what to think when you weren't there. But he'd driven the car off by then, and he took me quite a long way to a house I didn't know at all. And he kept on telling me that he was going to take me abroad and that we'd have a wonderful time together. He was quite nice, Nicola. Only I wanted you to come, too."

"Yes, I'm sure you did. And, anyway, it was very wrong of him to take you without consulting me or your Uncle Vaughan or anyone."

"He doesn't like Uncle Vaughan," Belinda remarked pensively. "Or Grandma. He asked if I did, and I said I didn't like Grandma much, but I liked Uncle Vaughan better than I used to before you came."

Nicola smiled slightly.

"I think your Uncle Vaughan is the kind of person one likes better, the more one knows him."

"Yes, maybe. But one likes Uncle Algie without. even knowing him well."

Nicola was fain to agree with this.

"Wasn't it clever of him to know where to find me?" Belinda smiled to herself as she dusted sugar liberally on her cornflakes.

"Very clever."

"How d'you suppose he knew?"

"Well, the whole thing was a silly, unfortunate business.

Your—father was quite mistaken in supposing we should want you to go away with him. But your Uncle Algie guessed he had had some idea of that sort, and he didn't think there was anywhere else that you could be. So he went straight to your father's place, explained that we couldn't think of parting with you, and brought you back. That was really all there was to it."

"Yes—I suppose it was." Belinda seemed rather surprised herself to find how easily the incident could be reduced to minor proportions. "But it was a sort of adventure, too, wasn't it?/'

Nicola agreed that it was a sort of adventure, and succeeded in hiding the intense fervour with which she was hoping that no such adventure would ever happen to her, personally, again..

They had a pleasant, not very strenuous day, during which they paid the postponed visit to Kensington Gardens. And Nicola, having heard from one of the agents—the one who had promised Belinda he would consider only really nice applicants—that a very suitable tenant was ready and anxious to rent her flat, they finished all the odds and ends of business still remaining, and arranged to leave London fairly early in the morning.

"We'll have to send Uncle Vaughan a wire to say when our train arrives at the junction," Belinda said. "Because he'll either meet us himself or send a car for us."

"Yes. I thought of that. I expect he will be too busy to come himself. He doesn't leave the works much before five, does he?"

"Sometimes," Belinda said. "But, anyway, it doesn't matter. He'll send someone." She evidently felt that her Uncle Vaughan could be relied on to see that a thing was done, even if he could not personally do it himself.

Nicola, too, had very much the same feeling about Vaughan Colwell. And she thought how nice it would be, after the harrowing experience she had had, to feel that all responsibility rested on someone else's capable shoulders once more.

Whatever his rule for times of leaving, it was Vaughan himself who met them at the station. And, as he took the cases from Nicola and stowed them away in the car, he smiled and said:

"You both look as though you have enjoyed yourselves."

"Oh, we have!" cried Belinda. "We had a most exciting time. I was kidnapped."

Any plans Nicola might have had for minimising the whole thing were obviously blown sky-high at this juncture. She bit her lip with vexation, but managed to give a fairly convincing laugh as she said:

"That's a bit of an exaggeration, Belinda."

"Well, even allowing for exaggeration, it's a startling statement," remarked Vaughan dryly as he got into the driving-seat. "What happened?"

Belinda, who was sitting between the other two, seemed— perversely enough—much more inclined to be chatty than she usually was with her elder uncle. And, before Nicola could give any soothing explanation, she plunged into eager detail.

"My father came and took me away while Nicola was out getting some milk. And then Uncle Algie came and fetched me back again."

Vaughan looked at Nicola over the top of Belinda's smooth dark head.

"What on earth does all this mean? Is the child inventing?"

"Of course not!" exclaimed the child rather indignantly.

But her uncle said peremptorily, "You be quiet for five minutes and let Nicola do the talking."

Slightly reassured by being called by her Christian name, Nicola managed to smile at him as though the issue were not a very grave one.

"I expect there will be a better chance to tell you all about it when Belinda is in bed," she told him, with a rather significant glance. "But—yes, something of the kind did happen. Fortunately Belinda was not away for more than a few hours."

She saw that it was only by the exercise of considerable self-control that he kept himself from asking any more questions. But, pressing his lips together, he managed to restrict himself to a noncommittal sound, which might have been an expression of anger or approval.

Nicola herself firmly spoke of other things, and it was obvious that Belinda was under the impression that the "kidnapping" could not be expected to be treated with any more interest.

As soon as they were in the house, however, and Belinda had gone reluctantly to pay her respects to her grandmother, Vaughan called Nicola into his study and, leaning against his desk, with his hands thrust into his pockets, he regarded her with a worried, rather than an angry, air.

"I gathered you were anxious for Belinda to forget the incident as soon as possible," he said. "And I don't doubt you're right. But, for heaven's sake, Nicola, what did happen?"

"I very wrongly left Belinda asleep in the flat one afternoon for about ten minutes while I went out to get some milk—as the child told you. It seems that her father came ‑"

"You mean he must have been watching the place!"

"I—suppose so," she admitted reluctantly. "At least, it's difficult to think that he arrived by chance during the only few minutes I was absent. Particularly as his simple plan depended completely on my being out of the way."

"Well, go on ‑" He spoke urgently, rather than impatiently. "You say Braydon came and took her away?"

"At least he knocked at the door, and, when Belinda opened it, told her some plausible tale about my being downstairs in the car waiting for her. She fell for it, of course, as I was not there, and went with him. As far as I can make out, he took her to his flat—house—wherever he lives.

"I was crazy with fright and anxiety, of course. But after— after a while I thought of telephoning your brother ‑"

"Algernon!"

"Yes. He guessed almost immediately where she was—I hadn't thought of the explanation, not knowing much about the family circumstances—and went along to get her. I don't know what arguments he used, but he brought her back in a short while, very sleepy but none the worse for her adventure. I don't think she was even scared, Mr. Colwell, and I've made as little of it as possible to her."

"To her—yes. You were quite right. But it isn't a matter one can make little of in itself." He frowned.

"She wasn't away more than a few hours, and she was brought back without difficulty," Nicola urged, doing violence to her own feelings and opinion in obedience to her promise to Algernon.

"That isn't the point. What has happened once might happen again."

"Algernon—your brother was sure it would not."

"How could he be so sure? What is his position in all this?" Vaughan shot a quick, suspicious glance at her.

"I—don't know." She wondered how she had ever supposed she could carry this thing off as being of little importance. "He happens to have known Frank Braydon rather well, I believe."

"Happens to have known him!" Vaughan laughed shortly. "Yes, that's half the trouble. They are still as thick as thieves."

"Oh, surely not! I mean—of course it's always difficult to drop someone with whom you've been on close terms.' But I'm perfectly sure your brother doesn't approve of his friend's behaviour."

"Then why doesn't he drop him?" inquired Vaughan, a little contemptuously. "There are no half-measures with the Frank Braydons."

"I—don't know," Nicola said uneasily. And she suddenly remembered the queer thing Algernon had said about there being no way back for some people.

She stared at Vaughan Colwell with troubled eyes.

"Mr. Colwell, perhaps it isn't my business to ask this, but— is this Frank Braydon in any sense a—a criminal character? Putting aside your natural prejudice against him, would you say he is anything but weak and self-seeking?"

He didn't answer that immediately, returning her glance with one of rather moody concentration for a moment.

"Frankly, my dear, I don't know," he said at last. "It's very difficult for me to think objectively about him, as you will imagine. As far as I know, he has never actually been in trouble with the police, if that's what you mean. But, as you yourself say, he is weak and self-seeking, and that is a dangerous combination which could lead to almost anything."

"Of course," murmured Nicola, who had been so astounded at being addressed as "my dear" by Vaughan Colwell that she attended to the rest of his explanation with difficulty.

"Why did you ask?" He glanced at her sharply.

She remembered then that in no circumstances must she let him even guess at her vague uneasiness over the connection between Algernon and Frank Braydon. So she said quickly:

"I was wondering if he were the kind who could possibly have meant any harm to Belinda."

"Oh, physical harm—no! I don't doubt he would like to have the child live with him—for the same reason that he wanted my sister to return to him. Belinda inherits a good deal of money, now that Ginette is dead. And if Braydon had the custody of her, he could count on a handsome maintenance allowance out of the trust fund."

"But would he ever be regarded in law as a suitable person to have her?" protested Nicola, as she had to Algernon.

"He's her father—unfortunately," Vaughan retorted dryly. "That counts, you know. Anyway, it isn't a matter I want to have put to the test."

"No-o. I see that." She looked away from him, because she was not feeling completely honest in the next thing she said. "Then, in that case, I suppose the less we make of this, the better."

He was silent.

"You said that before, didn't you?" he remarked at last. "Or, at least, you implied it. Strictly, you're being very common-sense and logical, of course." Nicola blushed and didn't feel common-sense or logical at all. She felt a sham, and hated herself for it. "But I do detest letting the whole thing go at that. I should like to put Braydon through the hoops in some way, damn him. And I'd certainly like to know what Algernon has to do with it all."

"He merely had the inspiration of going to Frank Braydon because he guessed Belinda would be there," Nicola protested anxiously.

"Knowing exactly where to find him, and what arguments would influence him," Vaughan reminded her dryly.

"But that's not unnatural when they had been friends."

"Yes, yes. I suppose you're right." He straightened up and patted Nicola on the shoulder, as though to indicate that the interview was at an end, and satisfactorily so, as far as she was concerned.

As they strolled across the hall towards the drawing-room, from which voices and the tinkle of tea-cups could be heard, Nicola reflected that he had not reproved her in any way for her own lapse in duty. And, glancing at him, she decided that he had his moments of indulgence—more frequent moments than she could ever have supposed when she first knew him.

In the drawing-room they found not only Mrs. Colwell— installed in an elegant, high-backed chair which emphasised her delicate charm without in any way detracting from her impressiveness—but also Belinda and Felicity, who had apparently just arrived.

Felicity greeted Vaughan with a slightly absent smile and kiss, and then, turning to Nicola, exclaimed:

"My dear, what a terrible time you must have had! Didn't you nearly go frantic when you found Belinda had gone?"

From which Nicola deduced, with some annoyance, that Belinda had been having an enjoyable time harrowing her audience with a highly dramatised version of what had happened.

"I was pretty scared," Nicola admitted.

"And you didn't guess for a moment that it was her own father who had taken her?" Felicity said.

"Miss Martin had no reason to do so," Mrs. Colwell's voice said pleasantly, and, to her surprise, Nicola recognised that the tone carried a very slight note of warning in it. She was evidently not intended to say anything about Frank Braydon's visit to Elm Court in the middle of the night.

"I simply didn't know what to think," Nicola remarked diplomatically, wondering all the time what—and how much— Mrs. Colwell knew which was still a mystery to herself.

"Well, you don't seem any the worse for the experience," Vaughan remarked to his young niece, touching her dark hair with an unfamiliar, rather affectionate gesture which was singularly demonstrative for him.

Belinda looked surprised, but gratified.

"Oh, no. It was worse for Nicola, I expect," Belinda said practically.

"Yes. Poor you!" exclaimed Felicity, her beautiful eyes round with vicarious terror. "What did you do?"

"Oh, all the usual things, you know." Nicola didn't even want to recall the dreadful hours just after Belinda's disappearance, and certainly not for Felicity's horrified enjoyment.

"But as soon as I thought of ringing up Mr. Colwell—Mr. Algernon Colwell, I mean—it was all right."

"Oh, Algie's wonderful like that!" Felicity's light, sweet voice warmed suddenly, and gathered overtones of real feeling. "Just imagine, Vaughan! He went straight off and rescued Belinda. Like a film."

"Not at all like a film," retorted Vaughan, and Nicola sensed an edge of irritation in his laugh. "And 'rescued' is hardly the word. Belinda wasn't in any danger."

"But she was virtually a prisoner!" cried Felicity, not to be done out of her drama. "And it was wonderfully clever of Algie to guess where she was."

"It was rather easy," replied Vaughan coldly. "Considering that he is on excellent terms with Frank Braydon."

"Not excellent terms, my dear," murmured Mrs. Colwell in delicate protest. "In the circumstances, that's rather a compromising expression, you know."

"It's true, nevertheless," replied Vaughan curtly.

"It is not true!" Felicity cried, flushing up suddenly in a way that astonished and dismayed Nicola. "Why do you always think and say the worst of Algie? You're never fair to him—never! It makes me furious! I sometimes think he's the only one in this house who isn't cold and censorious."

A small and quite terrible silence succeeded this incredible outburst. And then Felicity, appalled by her own frankness, presumably, pressed the back of her hand against her mouth, and stared across at her fiancé, who had gone quite white.

"I'm—sorry," she stammered at last. "I—I got kind of excited. I—didn't really mean that."

"I'm sure you didn't," Vaughan said. But though his voice was gentle, his expression was still blank and bewildered.

And no wonder! Nicola thought. No wonder!

For once in her life Felicity had been stirred to real feeling— had even expressed that feeling in almost violent words. But it was Algernon who had prompted the warmth of the outburst. Not Vaughan.

CHAPTER IX

afterwards, when Nicola thought over the whole business of Belinda's disappearance and the reactions of the various people concerned, she found it difficult to decide which aspect troubled her most.

Apart from the fact that the incident was disturbing enough in itself, she kept on recalling Algernon's inexplicable attitude and the hints which he had (almost involuntarily, she thought) let fall about his being mixed up in something which would not bear close investigation.

Then there was Mrs. Colwell. "Whose side is she on anyway?" thought Nicola resentfully, recalling her repeated determination that Frank Braydon's curious night visit to Elm Court should not be mentioned, much less discussed.

And finally there was Felicity's incredible outburst. This, of course, had nothing to do with Belinda's adventure, as such. But it had served to show that beneath the smooth, pretty manner which she affected, her sympathies, when it came to a family dispute, were violently with Algernon rather than her fiancé.

That had been a shock for Vaughan, too, Nicola guessed, for less than anyone else did he realise that Felicity, charming and sweet though she might be, was shallow, too. It had obviously never occurred to him that she might have been capable of rejecting the man she really wanted in favour of the brother who could offer more in the way of money and position.

"It's the sort of thing one would have expected Vaughan Colwell to see through at a glance," thought Nicola. "How can anyone so efficient and self-reliant be so—helpless, where a silly, pretty thing like Felicity is concerned?"

But the answer was, of course, that he would have seen through the whole thing at a glance ii it had concerned anyone but himself and Felicity.

As it was, Nicola supposed, with an oddly dissatisfied feeling, they probably had a private scene of romantic reconciliation, and that was the end of it.

Or did a vague, unpleasant doubt linger, hardly acknowledged, in the back of Vaughan's mind?

For Nicola life began to take on a regular and extraordinarily pleasant pattern after that. At first she had been afraid she would find that Vaughan had more or less created a position for her. But this was not the case at all. There was plenty of work for her to do. But it was interesting work, and Vaughan was an unexpectedly considerate employer.

Belinda's welfare was still her first consideration, but the little girl was going back to school very soon, and then Nicola would have her to deal with only in the evenings and at the week-ends.

It was a little difficult to define her exact position in the household. But—perhaps because the daughter of the house had so recently died, perhaps because of Nicola's own' disposition —she was accorded a degree of almost family importance which she had certainly not expected.

Not, of course, that she could, or wished to, take poor Ginette's place in any real sense. But, inevitably, her quiet, sympathetic companionship had its value to the' household, quite apart from the amount of really good work which she did.

Even Mrs. Colwell, in her courteous but chilly way, gradually evinced a sort of restricted friendliness for Nicola. And once, when they were alone together in the drawing-room—Vaughan being at the works and Belinda on some affairs of her own in the garden—she even offered Nicola what was, for her, a high compliment by saying that she thought her "a girl of sense and discretion".

"You mean," smiled Nicola, speaking on sudden impulse, "that I held my tongue about that curious incident which happened the night before Belinda and I went to London?"

After a moment, during which she obviously weighed up the respective merits of frankness and obstinacy, Mrs. Colwell said:

"Well, that was certainly one of the occasions on which you showed discretion."

Nicola glanced at the old lady curiously.

"And, even after what happened in London, you still thought it best not to mention that Frank Braydon came here that night."

Mrs. Colwell pressed her lips together.

"We have no proof that it was Frank Braydon."

"But grounds for a very strong presumption that it was," countered Nicola dryly.

There was another short pause. Then Mrs. Colwell said:

"You think he made an attempt, then, to take Belinda away?"

"I don't see what else one can think."

"No. If it was Frank Braydon, I don't believe he came to see Belinda on that occasion."

Nicola gave a vexed little laugh at such obstinacy.

"Mrs. Colwell, you've always been just a bit mysterious about that incident. So much so that I've even asked myself if you wanted to shield Frank Braydon in some way."

The old lady's expression set in lines of bitter rejection of such a notion.

"Not Frank Braydon—no!"

"Someone else, then?" Nicola was struck by the peculiar emphasis in that exclamation.

But Mrs. Colwell had already gone quite as far as she was prepared to go with a stranger. Even a discreet and sensible stranger.

"I advise you not to let your imagination run away with you, Nicola," she said coldly. But, since she made this the occasion for calling Nicola by her Christian name for the first time, the remark was not quite so much in the nature of a snub as it might have sounded.

Nicola thought a good deal about that conversation afterwards, without, however, arriving at any very useful conclusion. On the whole, she thought Mrs. Colwell knew very little more than she did herself. Only, being one of the family, she was naturally in a better position to define her suspicions.

With Felicity, Nicola found herself, rather to her amusement, admitted to a degree of intimacy she would not altogether have sought.

"I know just why Belinda took to you at once," said Felicity, who did in fact, or else pretended to, admire Nicola's reliability and common sense. "You make one feel safe, and as though everything will be looked after properly."

Nicola knew quite well that one of Felicity's reasons for according her this distinction was that she considered it a nice foil to her own pretty helplessness. But the statement was made with such palpable good humour that Nicola could only smile and say:

"Thank you. But do you feel in any need of being looked after?"

"Sometimes very much so." Felicity widened her eyes and looked wistful.

"I should have thought Mr. Colwell would have been the best candidate for the job then."

"Oh, but Vaughan doesn't always understand about things! Men don't, do they? Except Algie perhaps. Don't you think he has an almost feminine understanding at times?"

This was an acute observation for Felicity to have made, and Nicola looked at her for a moment with more attention than usual.

"You understand Algernon Colwell very well, don't you?" she said.

"But, of course! After all, I'm engaged to his brother."

"No—I didn't mean that. I meant that, although in some ways he's a very complex person, you have a rather particular understanding of him."

Felicity was silent, divided between the desire to take the compliment for her own and a certain wariness which interested Nicola profoundly.

"I don't think I know quite what you mean," she murmured. "Of course, I'm very fond of Algie. Everyone is who knows him well."

"Except his brother."

Felicity's fair face flushed unexpectedly.

"Vaughan has never been fair to Algie!" she exclaimed, with a hint of that violent indignation which had shaken her before.

"What makes you say that? Mr. Colwell always seems to me to be an exceptionally fair-minded man."

"Oh, in the ordinary way—yes. But he never will understand that when you're gay and charming, like Algernon, it isn't natural to have a rigid code and a grim regard for right and wrong, and all that sort of thing. There's no harm in Algie. Not real harm, I mean. But he likes quite different things from Vaughan. He's extravagant—but in a tasteful way—and he takes a real joy in the art of living. Of course, he's reckless and a little bit outrageous—but all so charmingly so, Nicola. I always think," said Felicity, who read a certain amount of pseudo-historic fiction, "that if he'd lived in the Regency period he'd have been a popular leader of fashion, you know, and a beau and all that sort of thing."

"He would also," replied Nicola more realistically, "probably have gambled spectacularly, as a younger son without much inheritance, and ended by blowing his brains out."

"Nicola!" Felicity was aghast, having apparently taken this idea much more literally than Nicola had intended. "Do you think he would ever do such a thing?"

"Not in the world of today. Don't be silly!" Nicola laughed protestingly. "We were transferring him in imagination to a much more sensational and frivolous period."

"And, anyway, of. course, he did have a considerable inheritance," Felicity said, as though drawing consolation from that. "Though I'm afraid he got through much of it very quickly."

"I feel that's likely " Nicola agreed grimly. "How long is it since he inherited?

"When his father died. Oh, I see what you mean. Old Mr. Colwell died about eighteen months ago."

"So recently?" Nicola thought there were signs that Algernon already had his financial difficulties.

"That was one of the things that Vaughan was so—so unyielding about. He thought Algernon wasted a good deal of money, as soon as he laid his hands on it."

"I suppose he did?"

"Well—in a way—yes. But it was his money, Nicola. I do think people should be allowed to do what they want with what is their own, don't you?"

"Oh, certainly. But one inevitably judges a little according to what they choose to do with their own, as you put it. I suppose it's pretty galling to see part of your family fortune being thrown away."

Felicity refused to follow that line of argument. She frowned and said in an injured tone:

"Anyway, Vaughan was always jealous of Algernon."

Nicola drew rather a long breath.

"For what reason?"

"Oh, Algernon was very much the favourite son, you know."

"Was he?" Nicola sounded surprised, for this was not the reply she had been expecting.. "With Mrs. Colwell, do you mean?"

"At one time with her, too. But certainly with old Mr. Colwell. He was much more Algie's nature. He didn't really bother much with either the estate or the works during the last ten years of his life."

"So that Vaughan—the elder son, I mean—did most of the work and the building up of the family business," Nicola said quickly.

"I suppose so—yes."

"He made the money, and the others spent it, in fact?" Nicola thought she saw things falling into place much more clearly now.

"In a way."

"And when old Mr. Colwell died, because the business was nominally his, he left large sections of a fortune which Vaughan had built up to people who would only waste it."

"Well, one had to be fair in family matters," protested Felicity with singular naïveté. "Of course old Mr. Colwell wanted to leave all his children provided for."

"Equal division of the money among the three children and Mrs. Colwell," murmured Nicola, recalling what Algernon had told her. "The mother admittedly extravagant, the sister married to a waster, itching to get his hands on the money, and the younger brother gaily flinging away what he had not even helped to build up."

"Nicola! I don't know why you sound so unfriendly to everyone all at once!" exclaimed Felicity rather huffily.

"I'm not unfriendly. I'm trying to see how it must look to the man who did all the work."

"But Vaughan likes work, you know. It's his principal interest. For ten years he hardly ever thought of anything else—until he met me." She laughed a little deprecatingly.

"You came here quite recently then?" Nicola asked interestedly.

"Oh, no. At least, my people have lived here for many years. But, of course, I was away at boarding-school. And then I travelled a great deal with my godmother until she died last year. I used to be home for comparatively short periods, and the few times Vaughan saw me, I doubt if he noticed me until we were properly introduced at the New Year's Ball this year."

"When he fell for you immediately?"

Again there was that deprecating little laugh.

"Yes. I suppose that about describes it."

"You are an exceedingly lucky girl. Felicity," Nicola said almost coldly, because there had suddenly come upon her once more a realisation of the dreadful sense of waste about all this. Surely, surely Vaughan Colwell could have found someone more worthy—more real and human—on whom to expend his singular devotion!

"Oh, yes, I know I'm lucky." Felicity smiled very charmingly. "You mustn't think I was criticising Vaughan. It's just ‑" She left that unfinished, and added, again with that astonishingly naive air, "And, of course, he was the best match in the country. I know at least half a dozen girls who were simply livid when I walked off with him."

"Was he aware of their being livid, too?" inquired Nicola with real interest.

"Vaughan? Oh, no." Felicity laughed. "He never notices girls in the ordinary way, you know."

"I suppose that's true," thought Nicola, faintly and unaccountably piqued at the reflection. "I don't believe he ever so much as notices what I have on."

And then, as though to prove her wrong on purpose, he remarked to her that evening:

"That's a very pretty dress you're wearing, Nicola. What do you call that colour?"

They were both in his study, where she had come to take down a few late letters for him and, with the task finished, he leant back in his chair, relaxed and, regarding her with a slightly indulgent smile, made the wholly unexpected remark.

"Why, it's a sort of—of sea green, I suppose."

"It suits you, if I may say so."

"Of course you can say so." She smiled mischievously at him. "No girl minds being told that."

He laughed.

"No. I suppose not." Then he frowned thoughtfully. "Tell me, are you finding life here rather uneventful and—drab?"

"Drab? Certainly not. I like being here. Why on earth should I think this rather luxurious life drab?"

He was apparently amused at her emphatic denial.

"Oh, I thought it must be rather dull for you, with no one of your Own age here, and none of the social life which I suppose you had when you lived in London."

"I didn't have a very social life, I can assure you. People don't have very social fives on even a good secretary's salary, you know. Of course I had my own circle of friends, and my brother's family ‑"

"Well that's what I meant."

"But unless one's very unadaptable, Mr. Colwell, one finds new interests in new surroundings. Just as the little comings and goings and events in my brother's family made up my interests when I was there, so the day-to-day affairs of Elm Court make up a good deal of my interests now."

"Do they really?"

"Why, of course."

"What, for instance?"

The direct query rather disconcerted her. She could hardly tell him that she was beginning to find most things about himself interesting, or that she thought his family were like people in a play. She temporised by saying:

"Well, I—like planning and arranging for Belinda, you know. And, quite frankly, I enjoy all sorts of things about a style of living which is a good deal more luxurious than anything I've been used to. Scrambled eggs in your own little flat have a charm of their own, of course. But there's a lot to be said for the novelty of coming down to a full dinner which you haven't cooked yourself."

He laughed a good deal at that.

"Yes, I can see that. But I think what I was feeling was that you must miss the—personal relationships."

"But I have those." She smiled at him disarmingly. "Felicity has been kind enough to make quite a friend of roe and, for the rest—you're rather an interesting family, Mr. Colwell."

"Are we?" The idea both amused and intrigued him for a moment. Then he sighed suddenly and said, "I wish you had been here in Ginette's time. I feel, if you had been—it might not have happened."

Nicola was sincerely touched that he should attach so much importance to her presence. But she said gently:

"I'm sure one always feels, after anything like a tragedy, that things might have been changed if only one could have done or said or thought differently. But it's very seldom so. I doubt if anything I could have said or done would have altered the decision she took."

"I don't know ‑" He linked his hands together lightly and stared moodily down at them. "She was such a warm, loving creature, really, in spite of her gentleness. You would have known how to talk to her. I loved her dearly, but—I can see now—I never allowed myself the time or the relaxation necessary for getting on "terms with her. I didn't really speak her language, and I suppose she would have found it quite impossible to confide in me. Sometimes I feel I failed her inexcusably."

Nicola got up from her chair and came round to where he was sitting.

"Please, please don't reproach yourself." She put her hand on his shoulder in her earnest desire to comfort him. "I can't help seeing that you've had to carry most of the weight, in this family. There's a point beyond which one can't go. It wasn't your fault that she didn't confide in you. She probably knew instinctively, poor girl, that she couldn't have justified her desire to go with her good-for-nothing husband to anyone. And, however close you had been to her, I don't think she would have confided in you over that particular thing. Try to believe that."

He put up his hand over hers, and held it tightly for a moment.

"You're a good child," he said. "I don't know why, but it gives me a strange comfort to reflect that you were with my poor Ginette right at the end, even though she never knew it."

Nicola felt the sudden, unfamiliar tears come into her eyes.

"Why, th-thank you," she said. "You couldn't have paid me a sweeter compliment. And I can, at least, promise you that I'll look after your dear sister's little girl for as long as you want me to."

"Oh, Belinda—yes ‑" He smiled more indulgently than he was wont to smile about his niece when Nicola first knew him. "I think my stock with her is rising a little."

"It certainly is. She told me in confidence that she thinks you understand her better these days."

They both laughed at this. And, releasing her hand, he stood up, and the moment of intimate understanding was over.

But Nicola very much treasured that memory, and thought about it a good deal afterwards, for it added to her knowledge of her employer in a way which made him a very real and human figure to her. Also—though she told herself that perhaps she imagined this—his manner to her underwent a subtle change. He had always been a fair, even a considerate, employer. But now there was—or she thought there was—a shade of friendliness in their relationship which seemed to indicate an underlying sympathy and shared-understanding which she did not think he accorded to anyone on his staff at the works.

"Uncle Vaughan likes you, doesn't he?" Belinda observed to her, with her usual charming bluntness. "He smiles very often when you talk, and he sits back in his chair and sort of takes his ease."

It was not the first time Nicola had been amused and surprised by Belinda's powers of penetration.

"We get on very well together," she said rather sedately. "He is a very kind employer."

"Oh—yes." Belinda evidently had not meant that. "He's a good deal nicer as an uncle than he used to be, too," she added frankly: "Not like Uncle Algie, of course. But quite nice in his way, I wonder why we never hear anything from Uncle Algie nowadays?"

"Perhaps he writes to your grandmother," Nicola suggested.

"But she never speaks about him."

"No," Nicola said, and her thoughts followed charming Algernon Colwell in a worried, questioning way into the mazes of whatever strange life he had marked out for himself.

"Won't you ask Grandma about him, Nicola?"

"But, my dear, why not ask her yourself?"

"I don't think she'd tell me anything," Belinda said sombrely.

"I doubt if she'd tell me, either," Nicola pointed out. And they left it at that.

But, a couple of afternoons later, she had news of Algernon in the very way she least expected.

It was a dull, windy October day. Belinda was at school, of course, and Vaughan at the works. Nicola, with a fair amount of correspondence to occupy her, was typing in the pleasant firelit room where she usually worked when one of the servants came in to say that Mrs. Colwell, who had kept to her room that day, would like to speak to her.

"All right. I'll come at once." And, adding a just completed letter to the pile awaiting Vaughan's signature, she got up and went upstairs.

Mrs. Col well's room, as usual, had an air of faintly impersonal elegance. But there was nothing impersonal about her expression as Nicola came in and closed the door behind her.

"Come here, my dear. I want to talk to you about something important and—very confidential." She moved, with unusual restlessness against her pillows. "Sit down here, near the bed, and listen very .carefully."

Nicola, secretly faintly amused by these rather elaborate preliminaries, did exactly as she was told. But, having staged the scene, Mrs. Colwell seemed to find some difficulty in making her opening speech. She looked at Nicola with an air of indecision unusual in her, and her glance then wandered away to some unspecified, distant point, where she appeared to see something which she very much disliked.

"I can trust you, can't I?" she said, with a mixture of anxiety and peremptoriness which Nicola found oddly pathetic.

"Why, yes, Mrs. Colwell. You have been kind enough to say before that I'm reasonably discreet and sensible. I can promise you not to betray any confidence of yours."

"You will never tell anyone what I am going to tell you now?"

"Not unless you give me permission to," said Nicola, wondering a little uncomfortably to what she was committing herself. "Is there some trouble, Mrs. Colwell? How can I help you?"

"Yes, there's trouble," the old lady said bitterly. "With Algie—of course. Why is it that it's always one's dearest who brings one trouble?"

Nicola, interpreting this as a slight on Vaughan, was silent, seething with an indignation which surprised her at Algernon being thus openly acknowledged as the favourite, even while his mother admitted his fallibility.

"Algie is in urgent need of an immediate sum of money, Nicola. I have the money here." She opened a handbag which, Nicola saw now, had been lying close beside her on the bed all this time, and took out what looked like a formidable bundle of notes. "I have no one to send with the money but you. Will you undertake this for me?"

"But, Mrs. Colwell"—Nicola was a good deal taken aback—"wouldn't a cheque be better? So much money ‑"

"Don't be a fool," interrupted Mrs. Colwell briskly. "There are times when a cheque is not a convenience."

The two looked at each other in silence for nearly half a minute. Then Nicola said, "I see. Where do I have to take the money? To London?"

"No, no. Of course not. You must take the car, Nicola. The little Ford which the bailiff uses. Tell him I say you are to have it. It will be rather a long drive, I'm afraid. You will find Algie at the cottage where—where Ginette died."

"Frank Braydon's cottage?" Nicola's dismay was obvious.

"Yes, yes. You haven't any silly nervous superstition about it, I suppose, have you?"

"No—of course not," Nicola said, though she privately thought how disagreeable she would find it to have to go into the cottage which had such harrowing recollections for her. "I only meant—what can Algernon be doing in that place?"

"That," Mrs. Colwell said, "is his affair. He won't be able to stay there ‑" She broke off and corrected herself. "He will not be staying there beyond tonight. It is necessary for you to go at once."

Nicola could hardly have described how greatly she disliked the task. But, after her eager offers of help, she could not possibly say she preferred not to go. Conquering her inward reluctance, she took the large bundle of notes from Mrs. Colwell's hand and listened to her last instructions.

They amounted to little more than an insistence on the need for both speed and secrecy. But there was that in the old lady's manner which made Nicola say:

"Mrs. Colwell, I think I have the right to ask—are we helping to—to connive at something criminal in all this?"

Mrs. Colwell's face hardened into iron resolution.

"I have not asked that question myself, Nicola, and therefore I cannot answer it. I can only say that possibly the less you and I know about the reason for Algie's need, the better. He is my son, and I cannot refuse to help him. You, of course, are under no such compulsion, but you are absolutely and literally the only person I can appeal to for help in doing something I am powerless to do myself."

It was not in Nicola, with her essential generosity, to reject such an appeal. Her common sense might murmur warnings, but her natural warm-heartedness and desire to help overruled anything of that sort.

"Don't worry, Mrs. Colwell. I'll see he gets the money," she promised. And then she went to her own room to fetch a warm coat and a scarf, before going down to the garage to get out the car.

Her explanation that she had a commission for Mrs. Colwell some considerable distance away served quite satisfactorily to establish her claim to the car. And in a remarkably short time, and with fewer explanations than she had expected, she was on her way with the money which Algernon so urgently needed reposing in her own, innocent-looking handbag.

She had time to consider, not only the peculiarity of the mission on which she was bent, but her own impulsiveness in accepting it.

"I couldn't have done anything else," she told herself, and perhaps that was true. But it disturbed her to remember that Mrs. Colwell was inclined to think she was a law unto herself, and was ruthless in carrying out what she wanted or what she considered right.

"She would do anything to save Algernon," thought Nicola, "and I can hardly blame her for that. But she never even thought of consulting Vaughan, which means she was nearly sure that he would refuse to be a party to whatever this business is."

That argued that it was irregular, to say the least of it. For Vaughan, whatever his prejudices or dislikes, would never have refused his aid to one of his family, if the need were real.

It had been clever of Mrs. Colwell to insist—or pretend— that she knew little more than Nicola herself, for that made it impossible to demand further information before making a decision.

"To have agreed may have been ill-judged," Nicola told herself. "But to refuse would have been impossible."

And, with this rather negative comfort to sustain her, she drove on through the fading afternoon light.

CHAPTER X

this time Nicola had no difficulty in finding her way, and there was still some light left by the time she passed through the well-remembered village of Fennell Thorpe.

Instinctively she glanced at the clean, severe-looking little police station, but, though her nerves tingled with a sort of half-guilty apprehension, she told herself that this had nothing to do with any doubt of the mission she was undertaking. Rather was it a feeling of regret that she had no time to stop and have a word with kind Mrs. James and her husband the sergeant.

There was no one about, however, either in the street or in the garden fronting the police "quarters". And Nicola sped on the last few miles of her journey.

Her heart sank unpleasantly when she arrived, at last, at the narrow turning leading up to the cottage. Try as she would, she could not rid herself of disturbing memories, and her heart was beating uncomfortably fast as she drove slowly up the winding path.

The trees and the thick hedges either side made it very dark, and Nicola was glad to switch on her headlights and make all the illumination she could.

As she turned into the small clearing in front of the cottage, her lights swept the building, and she thought uneasily that she had never seen a more isolated or deserted-looking place.

Even when she had stopped the car, she continued to sit in it for a few moments longer, hoping that Algernon, having heard her, would come out to her, rather than force her to make further investigations.

But the place remained silent and still. No light showed from it; no hand pushed aside the dusty, sun-bleached casement blinds, which looked as though they had hung undisturbed since Nicola herself had left them so, to hide the sight of Belinda's dead mother from her.

Everything looked so completely unchanged that it was hard not to imagine that Ginette still lay quietly in the room where Nicola had first found her.

So unpleasant were the fanciful thoughts which crowded on Nicola then that, with an effort, she opened the door of the car and, holding her handbag tightly in her hand, approached the cottage.

Her quick, nervous knock seemed to echo through an empty house. But there was no response. Only an intolerable sense of waiting.

If Nicola had obeyed her natural instinct at that moment, she would have returned to the car and driven away from this place as fast as she could. But her promise of help, the responsibility of carrying such a large sum of money and, finally, the impossibility of going back and confessing failure and disappointment to Mrs. Colwell without having tried everything forced her to put , out her hand-and try the latch of the door.

It yielded. The door swung back, and the faintly familiar lines of the little hall took dim shape before her.

"Algernon," she said softly but urgently, speaking into the darkness without attempting to cross the threshold. "Algernon, are you there?"

"Nicola!" He spoke out of the dim recesses of the back regions. "Yes, I'm here. Go and switch off those damned headlights, there's a good girl. We don't want to attract any attention."

She was so immensely relieved to hear him speak that she would have done almost anything he told her at that moment. But as she went to switch off her lights, she experienced for the first time in her life the disagreeable sensation of being engaged on something which would not bear honest investigation.

By the time she came back he was standing just inside the doorway, and he was looking so exactly like himself that she burst out indignantly:

"Why didn't you answer my knock? Or come out when you heard my car? Are we playing some sort of silly game, or was it necessary to rag my nerves like that?"

"Poor little Nicola!" He laughed regretfully as he patted her shoulder. "It's not a game, my dear. I wish it were. I couldn't come out until I was sure it was you. I was in the back when you drove up, so I had no chance of observing you.

When you knocked, I had to wait and see before I could risk answering."

"Were you expecting someone else then?"

"Not exactly expecting." The laugh was not so careless that time. "But never mind. You've brought me a message from Mother, haven't you?"

"Yes. I've brought you the money you wanted."

"Good!" There was no mistaking the relief and delight in his voice. "Forgive my not inviting you in. But there is more light here"—they could just see each other's faces in the last flicker of the evening light—"and, anyway, things aren't specially comfortable within doors."

"Algernon, how long have you been here—alone?"

"Never mind. Long enough. I'll be off tonight. Where's the money?"

She produced it, and he thrust it into his hip pocket, without attempting to count it.

"Give Mother my love, and tell her she shan't ever regret doing this," he said, and Nicola thought he meant it. "You, too ‑He put his arm round her and gave her a hug it was impossible to resist and rather difficult to resent. "You've been a wonderful friend. Don't think I'm not grateful."

"Oh, Algie"—in her sudden, almost affectionate concern, she called him by his family nickname—"you're very welcome to any help I gave you. I wish I could feel that it will set you on better ways, though, and not that perhaps it's only to cover up something discreditable."

"Nicola, I swear you would approve of what I'm going to do with this. Believe me, I've had my lesson."

She was too sensible not to recognise in this the traditional wording of the plausible constant offender. On the other hand, what else could he say, if he really were sincere?

In that moment she gave him the benefit of the doubt, and gripping his hand rather hard, she said:

"Well, then, I wish you the best of luck, and I shan't regret anything I've done for you."

"Thank you, my dear." Before she knew what he was going to do, he bent his head and kissed her. "And don't forget to give my love—truly—to Mother."

She thought it would not have come amiss if he had offered a few words of decent regret to his brother. So she said:

"I promise. Have you no message for anyone else?"

There was a queer little silence. Then he said:

"Would you take a message for me?"

"Of course."

"Odd—I didn't imagine your guessing anything." He drew his signet ring from his finger and pressed it into her hand. "Put that into your handbag"—she obeyed him mechanically —"and give it to her when you have a chance to speak to her alone."

"Who? Belinda?"

"Belinda? No, of course not. Felicity."

"Felicity!" She began to rummage in her bag to retrieve the ring. "But I didn't know what you were talking about! You don't suppose I could take that sort of token from you to your brother's fiancée, do you?"

He gave a vexed little laugh and, putting his hand over hers, stopped her attempt to return the ring.

"Don't be so horrified. I shan't be seeing her again, you know."

"What do you mean?"

"Just that, you little fool," he said, but not unkindly. "I shan't be seeing any of you again."

"Why?" She clung to his arm in sudden terror.

"Oh, don't be afraid. I'm not the stuff of which suicides are made. I didn't mean anything like that. Just that I guess my family has had enough of me for a good many years. Only —I would like Felicity to have my ring."

"I'm sorry." She spoke much more gently now, but with finality. "I don't pretend to understand the cross-currents in all this. But if you want to send such a thing to Felicity, I can't agree to be your messenger."

"Still faithful to Vaughan's interests?" He laughed rather mockingly, but he took the ring back from her.

"It would be a—a sort of betrayal of him if I did, you know."

"All right. How like him not to see such devotion when it's right under his nose!" He spoke in a tone of good-natured contempt. "Why Felicity with him, for heaven's sake? You're the girl he ought to marry. But things never turn out that way, of course. There—go along with you, or you'll lose your way in the dark. And I should be going, anyway."

She still hesitated a moment, bewildered and Strangely shaken by what he had said. There was nothing she could answer. There was nothing in all that, really, to which she should attach any importance. But ‑

"Can't I give you a lift?" she asked a little hoarsely.

"No, thank you. Cars are just a bit too conspicuous for me just now. But go, there's a good girl."

So she said "good-bye" once more and went, driving her car down the winding lane with as little light as possible, and then, once she was on the open road, going as fast as the car and her driving skill would permit.

But, fast though she drove, she could not outdistance the thoughts which he had planted in her mind. He was leaving the country, she supposed, probably for the reason that if he stayed he would find himself in trouble with the police.

That was shattering enough, considering that she was fond of this family by now, or, at any rate, very much concerned with its fortunes and welfare. But it was nothing to do with his own plans which had stirred her so deeply. Not even the revelation that he apparently loved Felicity in his way. What she could not dismiss from her mind were those few words in his last utterance to her. "Why Felicity with him, for heaven's sake? You're the girl he ought to marry."

It was an outrageous thing for Algernon to have said. An absurd, inexcusable opinion for him to have expressed. And yet—every nerve, every instinct in her, had answered to the statement, thrown with such careless impatience into their hurried conversation.

He was right. Against every reason and circumstance, Algernon was right. Felicity was not the girl to make Vaughan happy, or the girl to find any adequate response to his love and devotion. She knew now why she had felt that slowly growing indignation whenever she thought of Vaughan and Felicity together. She knew why she had so often told herself that he was worthy of a deeper, more sincere nature in the girl he loved.

It was not all so beautifully impersonal as she had pretended to herself. She was the girl who could and should have made Vaughan happy. She had been a hypocrite when she pretended anything else. She had not allowed herself even to imagine what it must be like to be kissed by him, or to light that blaze of happiness and love in his eyes, because she had known, deep down in that part of her that was half conscience, half pride, that no relationship but employer and secretary was possible between them.

Now all that was torn aside by Algernon's careless, impatient words. She was the girl Vaughan should have married. And she loved him and wanted him in a way Felicity had never dreamed of.

She was indescribably dismayed as she drove through the night with her newly discovered secret. And yet she was wildly exhilarated, too. However impossible it was that this overwhelming flood of feeling should find practical expression, she could not regret or, at this moment, stem it.

It was crazily wonderful to be alive and in love. Even though the secret was all her own, it gave a new significance to life, a new meaning to herself as an individual.' If she could have put back the clock, and changed her life so that she never knew Vaughan, she would not have done so. It seemed to her now that until she had known him, nothing which had happened to her had been of real importance.

It was no wonder that in this mood of alternating rapture and anxiety, with her mind on nothing but her own dramatically changed destiny, she missed the road home and drove miles out of her way.

Unlike the time when she had lost her way and found the cottage, however, she did at least realise where she had gone wrong and was able to retrace the road. But she knew by now that she would be hours late, and for the first time she began to wonder what explanation she would give Vaughan for her absence.

His mother, presumably, would have said something to him. But in their hurry they had not settled on an agreed story. The best thing would be for her to slip into the house by the back way and, if possible, see Mrs. Colwell before she tackled Vaughan.

But as rain began to pour down and the night grew darker and darker, so that she had to go more cautiously, Nicola found herself thinking that it would be sufficient just to see the cheering lights of Elm Court, without worrying about any problem that might await her there.

Her watch had stopped so that she did not even know how late it was when she finally turned in at the gates of Elm Court. She was stiff and cold and tired by now, but, even so, she retained enough presence of mind to drive the car round to the back of the house in the hope of slipping in unobserved.

Vaughan, however, must have been on the look-out for her. As she rounded the corner of the house he threw open one of the side doors. She saw him for a moment, silhouetted against the light. Then he stepped out bare-headed into the rain, and she drew the car to a standstill, with a feeling which was something between apprehension and a delicious pleasure that he should be concerned about her.

"Nicola! My dear child, where on earth have you been?"

"I'm sorry—I lost my way coming back ‑"

"I was worried to death about you," he broke in, and to her dismayed surprise she nearly said, "Darling, you needn't have been!"

Instead she exclaimed, "You mustn't stand there in the rain! Go in, while I take the car round to the garage."

"No." He smiled, and his anxious expression relaxed as he opened the car door for her. "Run along in yourself. I'll put the car away."

She started to protest, but he almost lifted her out.

"Go in. You must be dead tired and hungry."

She staggered a little, because she was indeed tired and stiff, and he put his arm round her to steady her.

Nicola thought that nothing in the world held ever been so wonderful as standing in the rain with Vaughan's arm round her. But, more practically, he seemed to think there was no reason why either of them should get wetter. He pushed her gently towards the open door of the house, and then got into the car and drove it of! towards the garage.

She went in and, aware once more of her responsibilities, dragged herself upstairs and along to Mrs. Colwell's room.

The quick "Come in", which sounded almost before her own knock on the door, showed how wide awake the old lady was, and that her ears had been anxiously strained for any sound of Nicola's return.

Nicola entered the room and, closing the door, leant against it for a minute.

"It's all right. I got the money to him," she said, guessing it was a moment for essentials rather than details.

Mrs. Colwell drew a long breath.

"Why were you so long?"

"I lost my way coming back."

"Nothing else? Nothing serious?" Evidently any inconvenience to Nicola did not rank as serious.

"Nothing else at all."

"Did he talk to you at all? Tell you anything of his plans?"

"Only that he was going away. He sent his love to you."

"Oh ‑" Mrs. Colwell passed a hand over her face and looked terribly old suddenly.

"I told Vaughan that you were called away to see a, sick friend on the other side of the county."

"All right."

There was quite a long silence. Then Mrs. Colwell said:

"Thank you, Nicola."

"You don't need to thank me. I'm glad I did it," Nicola said, and that was true. "I think perhaps he was making a new start. And this money was what gave him the chance."

"Did he tell you that?"

"Not in so -many words."

"But he said he was going away?"

"Yes."

"For a long time?"

Nicola had not really meant to tell Mrs. Colwell that, feeling that she probably had enough to bear at the moment. But she could not refuse to answer the question.

"I'm afraid so—yes."

"I dare say it's better so," Mrs. Colwell said, looking away from Nicola. "You'd better go and have something to eat now. You must be hungry."

It was not like her to notice the small needs of other people, and Nicola was curiously touched.

"Thank you. I will," she said. If Mrs. Colwell had been another sort of woman Nicola would probably have gone over and kissed her. But such a demonstration was unthinkable. So she simply added rather gently, "Try not to worry. I think he will be all right. And I hope you sleep well."

By the time she had washed and changed and come downstairs again, Vaughan had seen to it that a meal was ready for her.

He came into the dining-room and sat there with her while she ate. And she thought that, if she had not loved him before, she would love him now for the care he took of her.

"I hope your friend was a little better by the time you left," he said, smiling at the appetite with which she attacked her meal.

"Oh, yes." She hated lying to him, but she had to continue the story to which Mrs. Colwell had committed her. "It was really just a question of waiting until a—a sister could come and take over the care of the household. I'm sorry I had to leave some of your letters undone."

"That's all right. All the important ones were ready. I found them on your desk. You must have had a very long drive."

She wished she could draw him from the subject of her journey to other matters, but it would never do to look or seem restive.

"It was, rather. But the return drive needn't' have been anything like so long, if I hadn't missed my way."

"Mother said she thought you had to go almost to the other side of the county."

"Yes. Near—near Fennell Thorpe."

She was not quite sure whether good judgment or a fascinated desire to tell the truth in some particular prompted her to say that.

"Oh? Near—the cottage."

"Yes," she said rather faintly. "Did—did Belinda miss me this evening?" she added in a desperate attempt to introduce another subject.

To her relief she was unexpectedly successful. For he smiled, as though at some recollection which amused him.

"We contrived to entertain each other," he said. "She was, good enough to initiate me into the mysteries of Halma, and then she had the satisfaction of beating me at two games."

Nicola laughed.

"You two get on very well together these days, don't you?" she ventured.

V We seem to have found a more—personal relationship," he agreed. "You'd be surprised how ridiculously flattered I felt when she invited me to play with her." He laughed, as though at himself. Then he added, "She always played with Algie, of course."

Nicola felt her throat suddenly go tight.

"I dare say you will fairly easily supply the place of—of her other uncle as time goes on."

"But I shouldn't wish to do that!" He looked up quickly and protestingly. "I don't exactly get on with my brother, Nicola, but I've no special wish to edge him out of his rightful place in his home."

"No—of course not." She was trembling a little at her own slip, and she wondered how she could have forgotten that he must as yet be ignorant that his brother was not coming home any more.

"I'm too tired to risk much more of this conversation," she thought. And almost at the same time he said:

"You look dead tired. You had better go to bed."

In the usual way no girl likes to be told she looks dead tired, particularly by a man in whom she is interested. But again the charm of having Vaughan worried about her was so sweet and so novel that Nicola felt happy.

She said good night to him and went upstairs to her room. And, in spite of her adventurous and disturbing day, her last waking thought was of his putting his arm round her as they stood for a moment in the rain together.

It seemed impossible that, after this upset, life should go on in an entirely normal and uneventful way. But two or three days • slid by in a peaceful routine manner. The storm through which Nicola had driven on the night of her visit to the cottage seemed to have cleared the skies for a while. And, as so often happens in October, there were several bright and genial days reminiscent of late summer, so that Belinda—who was enjoying a half-term holiday—was able to be out-of-doors with Nicola a good deal of the time.

It was on one of these occasions that she said, with the curious abruptness which sometimes came to her.

"I don't think I shall see Uncle Algie again for a long time."

Nicola felt her heart give an uncomfortable thump and for a moment she wondered if Algernon had been so ill-advised as to write to the child.

But when she asked, "Why, Belinda?" the reply came frankly enough.

"I don't know. I just feel it. The way I felt it when Mummie was dead."

Nicola, too, remembered the curious conviction which had come upon the child at that time. But she made as light as she could of the incident and said:

"I could imagine that your Uncle Algie's interests will keep him away from home a good deal. I don't think life at Elm Court is exactly in his line."

"No." Belinda smiled at her suddenly. "But I like it as it is, don't you?"

"Very much." Nicola smiled, too, and forbore to remind Belinda that she had once thought she could not possibly be happy there.

However, Belinda was logical enough to remember these things herself, and honest enough to comment:

"I don't know why I used to think I couldn't be happy here," she said. "But that was before you came, of course."

Nicola could not but be touched by the naive tribute. And when Belinda added, "I wish you would stay for always," she could only reply, "I wish I could."

"Well, I'm sure you could, if you chose to!" Belinda exclaimed quickly. "Even after Uncle Vaughan marries. He'll still need a secretary then, you know."

"Oh, no, no! I couldn't." Nicola spoke with more violence then she had intended, for the thought of living under the same roof as Vaughan, with him married to another girl, was unbearable.

Belinda looked mildly surprised.

"Don't you like Felicity?" she asked.

"Why, yes. Yes, of course," Nicola said, wishing she had not been called on at just that moment to testify to her tempered liking for Felicity. "But—oh, there would be other things to be considered."

"I don't see why," declared Belinda, who could be obstinate, and was being so now.

"Well, we'll talk about that when the time comes," Nicola said firmly.

"I shall talk about it to Uncle Vaughan now," retorted Belinda mulishly.

"You're not to. I don't wish you to, Belinda." For once Nicola used a tone of authority which she very seldom employed. "Any discussion of that kind I will do myself."

Belinda muttered something not exactly submissive, but she was finally understood to say: all right, that Nicola could do as she pleased, but she, Belinda, thought it was all a silly lot of rot.

Nicola wisely refused to take up this expression of opinion, and the subject was allowed to drop.

But, although Belinda could usually be relied on to do what she said, Nicola knew that the temptation to interfere in this case would be severe, and once or twice when Vaughan spoke to her abruptly she felt nervously certain that he was going to broach the subject of her continued stay at Elm Court.

Finally, when she had come down early one morning and he called her into his study, with the obvious and urgent intention of speaking to her privately, she felt resignedly sure that the moment had come.

As she preceded him into the room, she rapidly marshalled her arguments for leaving as soon as he and Felicity were married, and at the same time she tried to bring to her face an expression of pleasant, friendly regret, which should express just enough feeling and not too much.

When he had closed the door, however, and turned so that the light from the window fell full on him, she saw that he was pale and almost agitated to a degree she had never imagined in anyone who was usually so self-possessed.

"Nicola," he said, before she could even voice any query, "does Belinda ever see the newspapers?"

"Belinda?" She was astonished. "She doesn't read them, if that's what you mean. Except perhaps the children's section occasionally."

"She wouldn't probably notice, then, if we kept all newspapers out of sight for a day or two?"

"I very much doubt it," Nicola said. "But why ‑"

"Her father shot himself yesterday. I'm afraid it's on the front page of most of the newspapers this morning."

"Shot himself? Do you mean—committed suicide?"

"Yes."

"But why?"

"Almost certainly because the police were after him. The newspapers are very cautious yet, naturally. But"— Vaughan pressed his lips together for a moment—"it looks as though he had been up to the neck in one of the biggest currency rackets of recent years."

"But"—Nicola had a confused recollection of visitors abroad spending more than their allotted amount of currency—"is it such a major crime. I mean—to kill oneself for it!"

"It was something on an international scale, Nicola.. The sort of thing that plays the devil with legitimate exchanges and undermines the stability of a country. He was not among the big ringleaders, of course. He was altogether too small a man for that. But—he was the one who looked like being caught," Vaughan finished grimly.

"The only one?"

"That I don't know. Unlikely, I should think, because usually when the police move in these matters they have cast a pretty wide net first. I only hope to God—"

He broke off and passed his hand over his hair troubledly.

"What?" She spoke sharply, and her heart had begun to thump uncomfortably hard against her ribs.

"I hope to God, Algernon isn't in it," he finished doggedly.

"Oh!"

Nicola went white. Much whiter than the occasion seemed to warrant. For in rapid succession she saw scene after scene which now fell irresistibly into place.

Frank Braydon coming to Elm Court late at night. Not for Belinda, but to see Algernon.

Algie standing by the window in her flat and saying moodily that for some people there was no way back.

And finally herself, driving through the late afternoon with a great bundle of notes "because a cheque was not convenient", on her way to a secret rendezvous with a man who wanted to escape all notice.

"What's the matter?" Vaughan's voice said sharply, from what seemed rather a long distance.

"Nothing," Nicola lied desperately. But she sat down and leant her elbow on the desk and her head on her hand.

"Are you faint or something?' What has upset you so much?'' Vaughan's questions were almost peremptory in their urgency and anxiety.

She tried to think of something to say. Something which would put him off for the moment while she had time to think. But her mind felt light and blank.

"It's all right," she began. And then the telephone bell rang just beside her.

"That will give me a few moments," she thought, not looking up but hearing him lift the receiver. "If only it's a long talk! If only I can get away without going into the whole question of Algie's possible part in this."

But it seemed to her that the 'conversation lasted no more than a minute or two. Certainly not long enough for her to have formulated any telling phrases for evasion.

She heard him replace the receiver once more, and waited helplessly for the resumption of his questions.

But nothing came. He was absolutely silent.

And presently she looked up to see him sitting the other side of the desk, his eyes bleak and his face a peculiar greyish-white.

"What is it?" she whispered urgently in her turn. "What has happened, Vaughan?"

She never noticed that she had used his first name, and apparently he did not notice either. He stared at her for a moment in continued silence. Then he roused himself to say, almost without expression:

"There is a warrant out for Algernon's arrest."

CHAPTER XI

for a few moments after Vaughan had spoken, Nicola was silent. Not with shock. She realised that she was hardly even surprised by the information that the police wanted Algernon. But she felt limp and helpless, like someone who had received a long-expected blow.

At last she said, almost to herself:

"Then he was in it, too."

"With Braydon. Of course. The police are coming here. They will want to ask questions—find out the quickest way to trace him. Thank God, I don't know a thing about his movements during the last few months."

She looked across at him, and longed to say something comforting. Longed to tell him that she was nearly sure his brother had got clear out of the country. But she realised suddenly that this was a luxury they could not afford. Vaughan would be the one who would have to face the police and answer questions. The less he knew, the easier his position would be.

What he did not know he could neither tell nor try to conceal. He would be saved the conflict between a sense of duty and a natural desire to shield his brother. Neither she—nor, she remembered suddenly, Mrs. Colwell—must tell him a word of what they knew.

And, with this thought in mind, she got quickly to her feet.

"I must go and tell your mother."

He looked both surprised and relieved.

"It's very good of you, Nicola. But you don't need to take on such an unpleasant task, my dear. I think I should do it."

"No!" She hoped she sounded less eager and anxious than she felt. "You'll have plenty to do, and quite enough difficult things to tackle this morning. Let me go and tell her, please. I think—it might—come better from another woman."

He didn't answer that directly. But he rose and came to her, and took both her hands in his.

"I sometimes wonder how on earth we managed before you came here," he said quietly. "Bless you."

Before she realised what he was going to do, he had raised her hands and kissed them. Then he let her go and turned away, and, indescribably moved by this unusual demonstration of feeling, she hurried out of the room and up the stairs.

She found that there were actually tears in her eyes, and that her breath caught in her throat in something like a sob. And, though she pretended this was because of her agitation and anxiety, she knew quite well that only the most loving tenderness for the one person who mattered could have made her feel like this.

Although Mrs. Colwell so often slept badly—or declared that she did—she was usually awake early, and when Nicola knocked and entered her room that morning she was already sitting up in bed, sipping coffee and looking extraordinarily fresh and elegant.

She smiled coolly, but with the faintest touch of indulgence at Nicola, and said:

"Well, my dear, what brings you here so early?"

"Nothing very nice, I'm afraid." Nicola came and stood close beside her bed. "But if you're as clever and courageous as you nearly always are, I think things may go all right."

Mrs. Colwell set down her cup and saucer, and said very softly, "Algernon."

"Yes. We are going to have to keep our heads during the next few hours." Nicola actually put her hand on the older woman's in a movement of reassurance. But Mrs. Colwell, who resented any intimacy, drew her arm' away immediately.

"Has he been taken?" was what she said.

"Oh, no. And I think the chances are that he is already out of the country. But there—there is a warrant out for his arrest, and the police will come here to ask questions."

A thin, cold smile passed over Mrs. Colwell's face, and Nicola thought, "I need not have had any fears. She's far better at this sort of thing than I am."

"Vaughan will see them, and tell them that we know nothing," Mrs. Colwell said with a touch of good-natured contempt. But whether for the police or for her elder son, who was so providentially ignorant, it was difficult to say. Then she frowned suddenly and said sharply, "You didn't tell Vaughan anything in your excitement, did you?"

"No. And I don't think I was excited," Nicola replied dryly.

Mrs. Colwell even laughed slightly at that.

"Good child," she said, and there was no doubting the cool approval in her tone that time.

"My chief thought was to tell you before Vaughan could. I was afraid—quite mistakenly, I see now—that you might betray yourself in the shock of the moment. It seems we underestimated each other's presence of mind," Nicola said with a faint smile.

"It is always best to underestimate your allies," replied Mrs. Colwell, thus graciously admitting Nicola to the questionable dignity of an ally in this sorry affair. "How did you hear about this business?"

"Vaughan—Mr. Colwell ‑"

"You didn't bother to correct yourself before," Mrs. Colwell remarked with slight malice, and Nicola flushed.

"Mr. Colwell was telling me about Frank Braydon ‑"

"What about him?"

"Oh—of course, you don't know that either! He—I'm afraid he is dead, Mrs. Colwell."

"I'm glad to hear it," replied Mrs. Colwell, with the cold ferocity of the completely self-centred. " You need not bother to soften that blow. How did it happen?"

"He shot himself," Nicola explained in a rather low. voice, because, small though her sympathy was with the dead man, she felt there was something extraordinarily repellent about this icy callousness. "He—and I suppose Algernon, too—-were in a big currency racket."

"I knew he was responsible for Algernon's misfortunes!" exclaimed Mrs. Colwell bitterly.

Nicola opened her lips to point out that Algernon had a free will and a great many more advantages than most—that, in fact, the person most responsible for his "misfortune" was Algernon. But she remembered just in time that any argument of this sort was futile. To Mrs. Colwell there were certain self-defined "truths" where her family were concerned. And one of these included the belief that her daughter's wretched husband was the evil genius of her children.

"I imagine Algernon went into it in a rather light-hearted way, refusing to take count of where it was bound to lead," Nicola said slowly. "I know he told me, in London that time, that he was on a path along which there was no turning back. I doubt if Frank Braydon could have had so much influence on him. There must have been others, too. People of whom he was—afraid."

"It started with Braydon," insisted Mrs. Colwell obstinately. "I knew he was up to no good and that he had come to see Algie that unfortunate night you saw him. That was why I couldn't have you babbling all over the place about his mysterious visit."

Nicola accepted this fanciful picture of herself as calmly as she could, and simply said:

"By the time I saw him—Algernon, I mean—at the cottage, I am nearly sure he had decided to break away at all costs. If he succeeded, we have nothing to fear. If he is not out of the country yet, we—or, rather, you—will have to be very careful. I doubt if the police will have any interest in questioning me, but they may want to have a few words with you."

"I shall be indisposed," replied Mrs. Colwell calmly. "Not sufficiently indisposed to refuse to see them, of course, as that would merely postpone things. But sufficiently indisposed to keep the interview short."

"They will probably ask you point-blank when you last heard of or from him," Nicola felt bound to point out anxiously.

"Well, of course." Mrs. Colwell gave that cold, self-possessed smile again. "What about it?"

"You don't mind"—Nicola glanced at her curiously— "having to lie about that?"

"For one of my children? Certainly not," retorted Mrs. Colwell imperturbably. "There are no half-measures about these things." And Nicola found herself feeling faintly sorry for whoever had the task of questioning Mrs. Colwell.

An extremely illogical reaction, she had to admit to herself a moment later for, after all, if she herself were taking sides at all, she was on Algernon's side, presumably, however unwillingly.

Just how unwillingly was brought home to her by Mrs. Colwell saying abruptly:

"If, for some reason, the police should choose to question you, I gather you will not feel it your duty to tell the unvarnished truth?"

"I shan't—volunteer any information," Nicola said, feeling profoundly uncomfortable.

"If you are questioned, volunteering information will hardly enter into the process," retorted Mrs. Colwell dryly. "But suppose—which is very unlikely—that the police should choose to ask you, as well as me, when you last saw Algie, what are you going to say?"

"I hope they won't ask me!" exclaimed Nicola in some agitation.

"So do I. But if they do?" pursued Mrs. Colwell, with a relentlessness which was curiously unnerving in anyone so fragile and elderly looking.

There was quite a long silence, during which Nicola almost felt herself go pale.

"I shall say—that the last time I saw him—was in London," she said finally.

"Good." Mrs. Colwell drew a sigh of impatient relief. "But don't take quite so long about it, if they do the questioning," she advised tartly. "Agitated pauses don't exactly inspire confidence in the truth of one's replies."

Nicola felt faintly indignant.

"Well, I earnestly hope they don't ask me," she repeated. "I have not quite the same inducement as you have to keep silent about Algernon's activities," she reminded the older woman rather dryly. "With me it would be a much—a much closer conflict of loyalties."

"Of loyalties?" repeated Mrs. Colwell a little disdainfully. "What form of loyalty, pray, would prompt you to, betray Algie?"

Nicola flushed at the word "betray". But she replied rather sharply:

"One does have a certain loyalty to the forces of law and order in the natural course of things, you know."

"Oh—that!"

Mrs. Colwell's amused indifference to such a view was so shamelessly apparent that Nicola was stung into saying:

"In the ordinary way I should certainly support the police in this miserable business. As it. happens, I was involved, willingly or unwillingly, in helping Algernon, and my own friendly feelings for him did the rest. I couldn't of course actually—betray him, since I have been taken so far into your confidence and his. But please don't imagine that I am particularly proud of my position at the moment."

"Dear child, you remind me almost painfully of Vaughan when you talk like that," Mrs. Colwell observed, still with that air of smiling indifference. "You must forgive me if I say I am completely indifferent to your feelings of either pride or shame. The only thing which interests me at the moment is that my favourite son should escape the consequences of his extremely foolish behaviour."

"Oh!" Nicola exclaimed indignantly. Not because of any slight upon herself. But because Mrs. Colwell should choose this moment, of all moments, to put into words the fact that Algernon was her favourite. "I don't know how you can say that," she declared in a tone of angry reproach which she would not have dreamed of using if she had not been so deeply stirred. "Vaughan is worth six of his brother."

"Of course he is," replied Mrs. Colwell equably. "But worth has so little to do with liking. Observe Vaughan's attitude towards Felicity, for instance," she added with an air of sweet reasonableness which had more than a touch of malice in it.

"Yes—of course," muttered Nicola, and took her leave on that. For she realised that there was not much which escaped Mrs. Colwell's bright glance, and she was terrified of being subjected to any speculation of hers when Vaughan was under discussion.

It seemed preposterous to go downstairs after this and calmly have a delayed breakfast with Belinda. But this was exactly what was required of her, and Belinda's self-important and anxious wails about being late for school were as good an antidote as any to her secret anxieties.

"What's Uncle Vaughan thinking of?" Belinda wanted to know. "We ought to have started ten minutes ago, as it is. But when I looked into his study to say so, he nearly bit my head off. No one's ever late unless they come by train and there's a breakdown on the railway or something."

Nicola thought it unlikely that the pupils at Belinda's school held quite such an unblemished record. But she saw in Belinda's need a perfectly good escape for herself.

"Your uncle's very busy this morning. I'll see if he would like me to drive you in. Get on your things, and I'll have the car round in two minutes," she 'promised Belinda.

Then she went to Vaughan's study.

"I've told your mother and she's taken it very well," she informed Vaughan, who glanced up with a worried frown when she came in, but relaxed his expression when he saw who it was. "She's even quite prepared to see the police herself if, for any reason, they think it necessary. I think I'd better drive Belinda into school this morning, don't you? It's high time she went."

"Oh, of course! I'd forgotten her. Thank you, if you will. And tell her as little as possible."

"Of course. There probably won't be any need to tell her anything. Can I take any message to the works for you while I'm in town?"

"Yes." He reached for a file of papers, scribbled a line or two on a sheet of paper, which he handed to her along with the file. "See that Johnston gets those, and tell him I'll either phone him or come in this afternoon."

"All right. I expect you'll be free by then."

"I hope so."

"They can't have much to ask or say," Nicola declared, with an assurance she was far from feeling. "Anyway, I imagine it's quite all right for me to go? They wouldn't be likely to want to interview me."

"Oh, no, no. Of course not." He was slightly impatient at the mere idea. And, rather thankfully, she gathered up the papers and departed.

By the time she had fetched a coat and brought round the car to the front drive, Belinda was hopping up and down impatiently on the steps, although she had been somewhat reassured to find that the clock she had previously consulted was a quarter of an hour fast, after all.

"But we'll have to hurry, all the same," she assured Nicola.

Nothing loath, Nicola put on the best sprint she could, and had the satisfaction of passing the police car on its way in from Morgenton, sufficiently far from the gates of Elm Court to prevent any appearance of Belinda and herself having anything to do with the place.

"That's a police car." Belinda turned her head interestedly and looked after it. "I wonder where it's going."

Nicola offered no suggestion, being apparently intent on getting Belinda to school in record time.

"I wish our police cars had sirens, like the cars on the American films, don't you?"

"No. Not at all."

"But it's much more exciting when they do," Belinda declared.

"There are times," Nicola replied dryly, "when I feel quite excited enough without police sirens to add to things."

Fortunately Belinda found this funny. So that the discussion about the advent of the police in their quiet district ended in harmless laughter.

They arrived at the school gate three minutes before the bell was due to go, and Belinda, very well satisfied with her new chauffeur, jumped out crying jubilantly that there was heaps of time now.

"Well, run along and don't waste the few minutes left," Nicola advised her with a smile.

"Will you fetch me this afternoon, or will Uncle be in town by then?" Belinda wanted to know, pausing almost on one foot in the act of departure.

"I think so—I'm not sure. Anyway, one of us will be here," Nicola promised.

"He's not ill or anything, is he?"

"No, of course not. Run along."

And finally Belinda, having spun out the very last moment of freedom, reluctantly took herself off to her particular seat of learning.

Smiling a little, Nicola looked after her. It was natural for the child to stay asking questions until the very last moment. But there had been a time when she would not have dreamed of asking after her Uncle Vaughan's welfare with even that degree of interest.

"If only Algernon hadn't plunged us all into this trouble, how pleasantly life at Elm Court would have worked out," she thought.

Then she remembered Felicity's place in the scheme of things, and with a sigh she acknowledged to herself that, however pleasantly life at Elm Court might have worked out, it could not be her own concern much, longer.

She drove to the works after that, and inquired for Mr. Johnston who was, she knew, Vaughan's right-hand man.

Nicola had never had any occasion to meet him before, but as soon as she introduced herself he said, "Oh, you're the famous Miss Martin, are you?" and shook hands very cordially.

She was amused and a little taken aback.

"I didn't know that I had any special claim to fame," she said. "Who conferred that on me?"

"Oh, Colwell, of course. I understand that you're all that is reliable and desirable in an employee."

"Is that so?"

Nicola laughed and coloured slightly.

"Certainly. And, that being so, I suppose I can say to you that I presume Vaughan's been delayed over this unfortunate business with his brother-in-law?"

Nicole's thoughts had been so entirely on the unfortunate business with Vaughan's brother that she had rather overlooked the brother-in-law for the moment. But she recollected the fact that Frank Braydon had probably achieved a good deal of newspaper notoriety with his final lamentable act, and she said gravely that she was afraid this had something to do with Mr. Colwell's absence.

"Hm. He doesn't have much but trouble with that family of his," remarked Mr. Johnston, shaking his head.

"No, that's, so," Nicola agreed, thinking how even more regrettably correct Mr. Johnston was than he knew. "But Frank Braydon isn't really part of his family, of course."

"Not strictly speaking. But there's the little girl, isn't there? And Algernon was a good deal too thick with this fellow Braydon, anyway. Though I suppose the less one says about that at the moment, the better."

Nicola agreed that this was doubtless so, and made her escape as soon as she could after that. She had no idea how much Mr. Johnston might be in Vaughan's private confidence, and just now she was afraid every time anyone mentioned either Frank Braydon or Algernon.

Her business at the works had not taken long and it was still disturbingly early. By no optimistic estimate could the police have finished their business at Elm Court, and Nicola was extremely reluctant to return there before they left.

She parked the car and did some not very urgent shopping, taking her time about it and spinning out every detail as long as possible. Finally she went into the favourite cafe in the town for a leisurely mid-morning coffee. And here, to her mingled relief and irritation, she was discovered by Felicity.

"Hallo, Nicola dear!" Felicity always verged on the affectionate these days. "You're the very person I'd have chosen to meet. Did you come in by car?"

"Yes." Nicola smiled affably and made room for Felicity at her table.

"And are you in any mad hurry to get back?"

"Not specially."

"Oh, good! I came in to do some shopping, and' my car packed up on me, right in the middle of Queen Street. I've had to leave it at the garage, of course, and I'd be awfully glad if you could give me a lift home later this morning."

"Why, of course," Nicola said, any reluctance for Felicity's society being quite outweighed by her pleasure in being provided with a perfectly valid excuse for lingering in Morgenton a good deal longer.

Felicity ordered her coffee. Then, leaning her arms on the table, she said in a lower and more confidential tone:

"You've seen about Frank Braydon, of course?"

"Yes. At least; I didn't actually read about it. Vaughan told me, and asked me to keep the papers out of Belinda's way."

"Oh, yes, of course! What a tragic child that is!" Felicity exclaimed, with one of those flashes of real feeling which almost endeared her to Nicola in spite of everything.

"I don't think she is aware of being so," Nicola said slowly.

"In fact, she has a rather' happy temperament. You won't find her difficult to manage, Felicity."

"I shan't?" Felicity looked slightly startled.

"Why, yes. After you are married, I mean," Nicola explained steadily.

"Oh, yes—of course. But you'll be staying on, too, won't you, Nicola?"

"No. I don't think so."

"But Vaughan will need you just as much in the future."

"Not really." Nicola wished agitatedly that the conversation had not taken this turn. "My work for him is—is rather a secondary consideration, you know. Primarily I was engaged to look after Belinda and make her feel that things were homelike, even though her mother was gone."

"Yes—I dare say. But you seem so much part of the place now." Felicity seemed oddly disturbed for her. "You haven't made any real plans to go, have you?"

"I haven't made any specific arrangements, if that's what you mean," Nicola admitted. "But I've always reckoned that my employment wouldn't extend beyond the time when you and Vaughan marry."

"Oh, I shouldn't be so sure of that, if I were you." Felicity seemed relieved that nothing definite had been settled. And characteristically, having discovered that her own wishes showed no immediate sign of being countered, she was content to dismiss the whole subject.

Having finished their coffee, the two girls went out into the town again. And for the next hour Nicola found herself, if not profoundly interested, at least wholly occupied as Felicity's shopping companion. '

It was as easy a way as any of passing the morning, and, as she glanced at her watch from time to time and saw how the hour was slipping away, she felt amusedly grateful to Felicity for her unknowing assistance.

Finally all the purchases had been made, and Felicity pronounced herself ready to return home.

Once or twice Nicola had been tempted to telephone and account for her continued absence. But, on the whole, she had decided it was better to have no communication whatever with Elm Court, and she doubted if anyone there would have time to miss her or wonder about, her that morning.

"I'll drive you right on to your place and then come back," Nicola said. "Unless, of course, you want to call in to see Vaughan first."

"Is Vaughan at home then?"

"Oh—yes. Didn't I tell you?" Nicola was faintly put out at her own slip. "I drove Belinda in to school this morning. That's why I was in Morgenton. He—there was a certain amount of upset about—the Frank Braydon business, and he stayed at home to deal with it."

"How do you mean—a certain amount of upset?" Felicity, who could be the most sweetly vague creature when she liked, could also pin one down with astonishing exactness over something one preferred to have ignored. And it was obvious that she was determined on exactness now.

Nicola bit her lip.

"Well, naturally, the police wanted to ask certain questions."

"About Frank Braydon? But he had nothing to do with the people at Elm Court. At least, not recently."

"I suppose they are his nearest relatives, all the same," Nicola countered, not very convincingly, she felt.

"Was it only about Frank that they wanted to see Vaughan?" Felicity pressed.

Nicola hesitated. Then she said;

"No, Felicity. I didn't mean to tell you, because I think it would have been better for Vaughan to do so. But you're bound to know soon. Algernon was in this business also."

"Yes, of course. I guessed that."

The calmness of Felicity's acceptance shook Nicola.

"You—knew?"

"I knew that he was more mixed up with Frank Braydon than was good for him," Felicity replied composedly. "And when I saw from the newspapers what Braydon had been doing, I guessed Algernon was in it somewhere, too. Poor boy—how foolish of him."

Nicola passed her tongue over her lips and deliberately made herself wait before replying.

She was, , she believed, as tolerant and understanding as most people, and she was genuinely fond of Algernon. But when she heard Mrs. Colwell, and now Felicity, refer to Algernon's undoubtedly criminal behaviour as "foolishness", she thought she understood why Vaughan had sometimes erred on the side of severity where his brother was concerned.

"Do you think," she said dryly at last, "that your father would regard Algernon's behaviour as foolishness?"

"Father? Oh, no, of course not. But then he has an entirely different outlook about these things," Felicity explained easily.

"Entirely different from whom?" inquired Nicola.

"Well, from me—or you—or anyone human and understanding."

"Please don't include me in that," Nicola retorted with energy.

But Felicity looked genuinely surprised.

"Why not? You helped Algie, didn't you?"

Nicola was absolutely silent, her hands very tight on the wheel. She hadn't thought of Felicity knowing about that. Only Mrs. Colwell could have told her, and Nicola had not imagined they were on terms of such dangerous confidences.

"I didn't know—you knew about that," she said at last. "But, since you do, I think I must add that when I helped him, I didn't know what he had been doing. And, quite honestly, I gave my help with some reluctance. I couldn't actually refuse to help when he was in such trouble. But that doesn't mean that I don't deplore what he has been doing."

"Well, yes, of course, in theory. But ‑"

"No!" Nicola cut in almost violently. "In practice. I'm disgusted and distressed to find myself helping a criminal to escape the law. Since the criminal is Algie, and certain people gave me their confidence and trusted in me, I can't actually take an active part in handing him over to justice. But I refuse to cloud the issue because of that. He was wrong, and the people who want to punish him are right. It's as simple as that. Don't let's pretend anything else. I suppose you and Mrs. Colwell have talked things over, and made almost a victim of Algie in your sentimental estimations. But the fact is ‑"

"I haven't talked anything over with Mrs. Colwell. I don't much like her," stated Felicity calmly, "and shouldn't dream of discussing Algie with her."

"Then—how did you know about me? About my helping Algie."

"Why, from him, of course." The car swerved slightly.

"What did you say? You heard—from Algernon? When?"

"Yesterday," Felicity said composedly, "I had a long letter from him yesterday."

CHAPTER XII

Nicola's first instinct was to say, "For heaven's sake, don't tell me any more." But her next one was an irresistible longing to hear whatever Felicity felt like telling her.

"You—had a long letter. Felicity, do you realise that the police are looking for him? That there is a warrant out for his arrest? You mustn't be so terribly casual about hearing from him. You might find yourself being questioned closely on his whereabouts."

"But I don't know his whereabouts," Felicity retorted calmly. "Only that he is abroad."

"My goodness, girl! Why couldn't you have said that in the beginning?" cried Nicola, torn between relief and exasperation. "I've been frantically anxious—and so has his mother— in case he might not have got away abroad."

"I thought you weren't on his side," Felicity said, with a touch of malicious amusement.

"Oh, I—I'm not, in a way. But I didn't want him taken by the police, for all that. I wasn't anxious to assist in frustrating what you might call the ends of justice. But,"—she smiled suddenly—"I'm terribly glad he's safe. As safe, that is, as he can be," she added more gravely. "Can one be extradited, or whatever it's called, for what he has done?"

"I'm sure I don't know," said Felicity with extraordinary indifference for the daughter of a judge. "I don't imagine so. Not unless one had been a great deal more guilty than Algernon has. I expect they wanted him more for what he knew than for what he did. He wasn't one of the big figures in this racket, Nicola. He was much too—worried and insecure for that."

"Yes, I think you're right," Nicola agreed slowly. "Besides, at one point, anyway, he wished most desperately to be free of it all. That's why I did agree to help him, and why I dared to hope that he was speaking the truth when he said he wanted to get away and make a fresh start."

"Did he say that?" Felicity asked rather softly.

"Yes. When I took him the money."

"Oh, Nicola, what money? When did you see him?" Felicity exclaimed, with much more genuine feeling than she usually showed.

"But I thought you knew all. about that. You said he told you about my helping him."

"Only the fact. Nothing about the details. He said that with your 'blessed help'—he used those words—he had got away. But he didn't say anything else. Tell me about it, Nicola. Please."

It was impossible to resist this plea and, since there seemed no harm now in telling Felicity the bits she did not already know, Nicola gave a brief account of what she had done at Mrs. Colwell's request.

"He needn't have applied to her for the money," Felicity murmured resentfully once. "I wish he'd asked me."

"It was a good deal more—more seemly that he should ask his mother," Nicola stated dryly. "Apart from the fact that you have no real connection with him, you are your father's daughter. Imagine if you had been caught helping someone in Algernon's position."

"I shouldn't have been caught," replied Felicity with the almost idiotic obstinacy which she could sometimes display. "But it doesn't matter now. Were you very scared, Nicola?"

"I very much disliked the task," Nicola admitted. "But if it really helped him, and he does mean to make a fresh start somewhere else, then I'm glad that I did it. I know I sounded very severe just now when I was speaking of him. But, if he's learned his lesson, I'm only too thankful he should have a second chance. It's only that it—it makes me mad to have the actual rights and wrongs of the position so clouded."

"I don't look at it that way at all," Felicity replied easily. "I lo ‑I like Algie, and I want him to be safe. That's all."

Nicola tried to find an answer to this, and failed.

They drove on in silence for a few minutes, and then Felicity said quietly, almost coaxingly:

"Nicola, will you tell me something else?"

"If I can."

"Algie said in his letter that he asked you to bring me something from him, but you refused. Will you tell me what it was?"

"Felicity ‑" Nicola was a good deal distressed. "I'd much rather not talk about it. It was something he had no right to send you."

"But I have some right to know what it was, and judge for myself," retorted Felicity with unexpected acumen. "It's true that, if you didn't—approve, you were entitled to refuse to be the messenger, so to speak. But that doesn't deny me the right to know about it."

Nicola was silent for a moment. To prevaricate still further and then be forced to give in would be to attach an artificial importance to the whole thing. She greatly resented being drawn into this business, but, since Felicity knew something about it, perhaps the most sensible thing was to make as little of it as possible.

"I don't want to exaggerate the incident," she said after a short pause, "and of course it's not for me to take any stand on the subject. But he—he wanted to send you his signet ring, Felicity. And I must say that I felt I shouldn't be acting rightly towards Vaughan if I lent myself to anything of the sort. Maybe I was silly and attached too much importance to a friendly memento. But, if he wanted to send you anything of the kind, I preferred not to be the messenger, as you say."

There was another silence--a long one that time. Then Felicity said:

"Yes. I think—I understand."

Nicola had the curious impression that Felicity was referring to something more than the understanding of her point of view. But she dismissed the idea as fanciful, and no further reference was made to the ring.

"I imagine that the police will have finished any questioning they wanted to do by now," Nicola said. "Vaughan was going to see them, and he, of course, didn't know a thing about my taking the money to Algie. If they wanted to see anyone else it would have been Mrs. Colwell, and she ‑"

"Is more than capable of dealing with them," finished Felicity with a laugh.

"I imagine so." Nicola smiled slightly, but without much real amusement, for Mrs. Colwell did not amuse her. "I didn't think they were at all likely to want to ask me anything, but I thought it was as well to be out of the way. That's why I took Belinda to school and hung about in Morgenton."

"Yes—well, I don't think I'll look in at the Court just now." Felicity sucked her underlip thoughtfully. "The less I am in the picture, the better also."

"I agree."

"Will you let me know what happens?"

"Of course. Or else Vaughan will."

"He won't understand all the implications as well as you do, being only half informed."

"But once the police have gone, and now that we know Algie is safely abroad, don't you think we might tell Vaughan and relieve his anxiety, too?"

"No!" Felicity spoke sharply and with unwonted authority. "The less he knows about Algie for some while, the better. We're not at all sure at which point knowledge will cease to be dangerous."

"But, Felicity, he's terribly worried!"

"We can't help that." Felicity evidently contemplated any anxiety of Vaughan's with much more equanimity than she felt over the slightest risk to Algernon. "It's a purely temporary business. He can put up with it for a little while."

Nicola felt fiercely resentful.

"Don't you care about anything that happens to Vaughan?" she exclaimed angrily.

"Not if it means danger to Algie," retorted Felicity coolly. And then, seeing the shocked and angry flush which rose to Nicola's cheeks, she added, "So far as any minor matter is concerned, I mean. And it is a minor matter that he should be temporarily worried, Nicola. Don't say anything to him yet. You'll only make trouble."

Nicola felt sulky—a most unusual mood with her. But she finally muttered:

"I won't say anything today, anyway. But I think it's a shame. Particularly as it would just be a general assurance that Algernon was safely 'abroad'. We don't even know where he is."

"No. And you're not going to!" Felicity laughed almost gaily.

"Do you mean to say that you do know?"

"I can make a very good guess."

Nicola glanced incredulously at Felicity, and wondered how long she supposed she could flit through life paying hardly any tribute to the natural fitness of things. No one, hearing her speak, could have supposed that she was solemnly engaged to marry Vaughan. Vaughan who was worth half a dozen of his brother, as Nicola had so indignantly told Mrs. Colwell. She seemed entirely occupied with the fate of Algernon, and to rejoice in the fact that she had exclusive information about him.

"Perhaps it's just as well that Algernon went abroad," thought Nicola with a sigh. "There would have been any amount of trouble after the marriage, if he had stayed here."

Having deposited Felicity at her home, and repeated her unwilling promise not to tell Vaughan anything for the moment, Nicola finally drove home to Elm Court.

She was not quite sure what she had scared herself into expecting. Something dramatic and nerve-racking, certainly, though she still clung to the belief that there was no likelihood of her being personally involved.

But when she had garaged the car and gone, with secret misgiving, into the house she was immediately struck by the complete normality of the atmosphere.

Indeed, as she stood, undecided, in the big square hall, Vaughan came out of his study and said, as though it were just any ordinary day:

"Hallo. What happened to you all the morning?"

"I—did some shopping. Then I met Felicity and, as her car had broken down, I gave her a lift home."

"Felicity?" he began. But, unable to wait any longer, she broke in anxiously:

"Did everything—go all right?"

"Yes, of course. Come on in"—he stood aside for her to enter his study—"and I'll tell you about it. There's no need to look so worried." He laughed a little and patted her shoulder in a kindly way. "You aren't living in a thriller, you know. It was just a routine police inquiry. Unpleasant, since one doesn't like to think of one's family being mixed up in anything of the sort"—he made a slight face—"but unsensational. Algernon hadn't been near home since he left.

just about the time you and Belinda went to London, so there was obviously very little that either Mother or I could tell them."

"Oh, they interviewed Mrs. Colwell, too?"

"Yes. For some reason or other she seemed almost eager for them to do so. But she really hadn't anything to say. They asked about recent letters, of course, and she produced a couple of harmless notes, written from his club nearly a month ago. But we honestly had nothing to tell them—I'm thankful to say," Vaughan added grimly.

Nicola glanced at him curiously.

"What," she asked irrepressibly, "would you have done if you had known something vital? Something that would have helped the police, I mean."

He frowned.

"To tell you the truth, Nicola, I don't know," he said. "It's the kind of theoretical question that's quite amusing—until it concerns someone near to one. I suppose you're thinking that because Algernon and I didn't get on very well ‑" He broke off, sighed impatiently and shook his head. "That doesn't come into it at all, of course. I still think he's been a young fool—and probably worse—but he is also my brother and in trouble. Even if I had known something vital, as you say ‑

Well, I'm thankful I didn't."

He laughed rather angrily, as though he despised himself for not being able to draw a clear line on any issue. But Nicola, smiling at him more affectionately than she knew, said:

"I imagine most people, if it came to the point, would be equally undecided and equally glad to avoid having to choose. Don't worry about it, Vaughan."

Although she had spoken of him by the first name before, she had not spoken to him in such a manner.

He looked slightly startled, which made her realise her slip and blush deeply. But he laughed then and said kindly:

"That seems to express our recent state of friendship very nicely. Please don't change it."

"Thank you. Though it—was a slip," Nicola said as lightly as she could.

Then she went upstairs to see Mrs. Colwell and tell her— since there was no harm in increasing her already comprehensive knowledge—that Algernon was safely abroad.

She was not so surprised, as Nicola had expected, to hear that the news came through Felicity.

"I've always supposed that he kept up some sort of correspondence with her," Mrs. Colwell said calmly.

"Rather undesirable in the circumstances, wasn't it?" Nicola retorted dryly.

"My dear child, she was—is his future sister-in-law. I don't know why he shouldn't write to her."

"Oh, yes, you do," replied Nicola, too angry and sore on Vaughan's behalf to bother much about politeness. "You know, as well as I do, that she has a romantic attachment for Algernon, which is most unfair on the man to whom she's engaged. Did you never even suggest to Algernon—your favourite son," she interpolated rather bitterly, "that the decent thing would have been for him to keep out of Felicity's way and not write to her?"

"My dear"—Mrs. Colwell smiled at Nicola with a sort of contemptuous indulgence that was not entirely unkindly—"I have lived a great while longer than you have, and I am a much more worldly and adaptable person than you will probably ever be. Believe me when I tell you that it is almost always a mistake to try to regulate someone else's conduct by your own particular outlook."

Nicola bit her lip.

"In the sense that most things to do with other people are not one's business—yes," she admitted at last. "But there are times when one must feel, and I think express, a—a certain moral indignation."

Mrs. Colwell laughed softly.

"Such an uncomfortable philosophy," she objected. "And I confess that all my life I have avoided discomfort as much as possible."

Nicola forbore to point out that there might be a certain relation between this self-confessed attitude and the fact that her daughter had died away from home and estranged from her family, while her favourite son could no longer show his face in his own country. It would have been a melancholy argument to pursue and, on the whole, Nicola decided, an unprofitable one.

So, making no further comment on Mrs. Colwell's philosophy of life, she went downstairs to. have lunch with Vaughan.

During this meal he caused her a few moments of acute anxiety by referring again to Felicity and asking how much she knew of the position.

"She had read about Frank Braydon, of course," Nicola explained carefully. "And she, too, had realised that Algernon was much too thick with him. She—asked about Algie, and I told her about the—police coming. I thought it better to do so, since she already knew so much."

"Yes. I think you were right." He sighed impatiently. "I'm afraid it will have been a great shock for Felicity. She is very fond of Algie."

"Yes," said Nicola, because she could think of nothing else at all to say.

He smiled faintly and a little sardonically.

"There was a time when I was even—jealous of him. It seems ungenerous now."

"It's not ungenerous at all!" exclaimed Nicola indignantly. "It was a very natural feeling for you to have. Algie did try to—to flirt with her, as he did with every girl. And she didn't always discourage him as much as she should."

There was no other way she could put it, without sounding spiteful or self-righteous. But that much at least she had to say. She simply could not have Vaughan blaming himself, even to a slight degree, while all the time she knew that Algernon and Felicity were in secret correspondence with each other.

Vaughan smiled again at her vehemence.

"My dear Nicola, if ever I commit a very grave fault I hope I have you for my apologist. You certainly are a most reassuring defender." And his eyes twinkled rather, so that she blushed and murmured hastily:

"Only when people are in the right."

"Well, then, let me say that you seem to find me in the right with refreshing frequency," he said, getting up with a laugh. "Thank you, my dear." He patted her shoulder as he paused for a moment by her chair. "I must go off to the works now.

If anything else turns up in connection with this unfortunate business, you'd better put all inquiries on to me. But I don't anticipate anything further."

"Very well." With difficulty she resisted the desire to put up her hand over his. Instead she managed to give the impression of being unaware that he had touched her, and asked in a very matter-of-fact tone, "Will you be able to fetch Belinda from school, or shall I?"

"Oh, I'll see after her."

He had relaxed considerably from the tension of that morning, she realised, and she hoped that a quiet and pleasant lunch with her had had something to do with that.

When Vaughan had gone Nicola turned her attention to her neglected correspondence and other routine matters, although, after the drama of the morning, it was singularly difficult to fix one's attention on ordinary things.

It was very quiet in the house. A heavy, oppressive quiet which vaguely disturbed Nicola, though she told herself that it was foolish and fanciful of her to feel like that, since Elm Court was always quiet when Belinda was out of the house.

This afternoon, however, it seemed to her that the silence had a waiting quality' about it which she had never noticed before.

But, whatever her fancies, the afternoon passed without incident. Nicola got through a considerable amount of work, and by the time Belinda and her uncle returned from Morgenton it was difficult not to feel that this was an ordinary day, like any other ordinary day.

In the evening Mrs. Colwell came downstairs, but even to Nicola—who found it hard to regard her with sympathy or tenderness—she looked old and rather spent. Exquisitely pretty and elegant, as usual, but as though the first cracks in the delicate facade were beginning to show.

"Are you sure you feel strong enough to be downstairs, Mother?" Vaughan asked, with that air of courteous concern which he always showed her, even though, Nicola strongly suspected, there was no bond of warm affection between them.

"I'm perfectly well," the old lady replied with a touch of asperity, and no one pursued the matter further.

After dinner Vaughan went over to Felicity's place, and Nicola and Mrs. Colwell were left alone together, since Belinda was, of course, in bed by now. It was not an unusual circumstance, and many times before Nicola had sat there reading or knitting, while Mrs. Colwell stitched away at the tapestry at which she excelled.

But this evening there was a current of uneasiness—almost of enmity—running between them, and, although any words they addressed to each other were perfectly pleasant, Nicola thought:

"We both know too much now of what the other thinks and knows. I believe she even suspects that I love Vaughan. At any rate, she knows that I bitterly resent Felicity's intimacy with Algernon. It will be a good thing for us all when this period of uncertainty comes to an end. If Vaughan would marry Felicity soon and bring her here, and, make her forget about Algie or anyone else, that would be the best for us all, I suppose."

But, as this would also involve her own departure from Elm Court and the possibility that she might never see Vaughan again, she found it hard to make her heart agree with her head on this view.

Vaughan had not come in when they went to bed, and Nicola had no opportunity, therefore, of observing whether anything in Felicity's manner had either disturbed or puzzled him.

During the next few days, however, he seemed quite satisfied with things.

Once he told Nicola that he felt pretty sure that Algernon must have got away to the Continent or. the States. And Nicola, trying to look innocent, said, "I think he must have, too."

Beyond that, very few references were made to the sensation which had threatened to rock their lives.

A whole week went past without any further news, except for the formal report of the inquest on Frank Braydon, and Nicola told herself that soon they would all have accepted the question of Algie as being settled.

Late on the Friday afternoon of that week, however, she heard Mrs. Colwell ring her bell, with a suggestion of agitation —unless that were Nicola's fancy—which brought Nicola to her feet.

It was not her business to answer Mrs. Colwell's bell, and she stood by her desk undecided, but tingling with a sort of premonitory anxiety, while she heard one of the servants go upstairs. Before the girl was half-way down again, she had yielded to her inner prompting and was out in the hall. So that the expected, "Mrs. Colwell wants to see you, miss," sent her running up the stairs, two at a time.

She was not quite sure herself what she expected. Not, certainly, that Mrs. Colwell would be sitting up in her chair by the window quite so flushed, or with quite such a subtle air of triumph and satisfaction about her.

"You've heard from Algernon!" exclaimed Nicola, glancing at the open letter in the, old lady's hand.

"No." Mrs. Colwell smiled in that faintly disconcerting way of hers. "Not from Algernon. From Felicity. She flew over to join Algie last night."

"She—what?" Nicola stood there aghast.

"She flew to join Algie last night, and posted this letter from the airfield just before she left. I wondered if that was what she would do."

"But"—the colour rose in a sudden and furious flood into Nicola's face—"what about Vaughan?"

"My dear. Felicity was never really in love with Vaughan."

"But he was with her! She was engaged to him. She'd promised to marry him. He had planned all his future on that. How dared she do such a thing? It's wicked—wicked of her. Just to toss Vaughan aside, as though he's worth nothing." Nicola was almost crying. "Has she even bothered to write and tell him what she proposed to do?"

"No. She thought it would come better from me," Mrs. Colwell replied composedly. "She asks me in this letter if I will tell him."

"You?"

Nicola had not meant to sound insulting. But the idea of Mrs. Colwell, with her light, worldly, cynical touch, being the bearer of such news for anyone—least of all Vaughan—quite simply appalled her, and her tone showed that it did.

The faintest colour came into Mrs. Colwell's cheeks, and her eyes sparkled dangerously.

"I am, after all, his mother," she said dryly.

"I sometimes wonder how often you bother to remember that," Nicola retorted bitterly. And, turning, she went out of the room, shaking with anger and distress and hardly caring what impression she left behind her.

As she came slowly down the stairs again, feeling for each step with her foot, as though she could not see very well, she heard Vaughan's car draw up outside the house.

The front door opened, and Belinda came bounding in, full of energy, as she always was, the moment she was released from school. She rushed towards Nicola, chattering of some piece of school news. But, for once, she met with no smiling and attentive reception.

"Run away, Belinda!" exclaimed Nicola, who never used that most insulting of requests in the ordinary way. "I can't talk to you just now. I must speak—to your uncle—about something important."

For suddenly it had come to Nicola that there was only one person who could tell Vaughan what had happened and soften the pain of the blow a little. If he were not to learn of his humiliating loss from his mother, then she, Nicola, must-undertake the task of telling him.

She was horribly scared by the prospect, even as she made the decision, but nothing would have shaken her determination now. It was the only thing she could do for him in this dark hour of his life, and because she loved him, she had to do it.

CHAPTER XIII

Vaughan, having garaged the car, came in a few minutes after his niece. Belinda had already withdrawn— faintly huffy, but obedient to the note of authority in Nicola's voice.! And now Nicola stood alone at the bottom of the stairs —waiting.

He did not notice her at first, but went to glance at one or two letters which lay on the hall table. Then, at some slight movement she made, he looked up and saw her.

"Hallo." He slid his thumb under the flap of one of the envelopes, and added absently, "Everything all right?" while he studied the contents of the letter.

It was a purely conventional inquiry, without any particular significance. But it was, she thought, peculiarly apt for the occasion.

"No." Nicola said, and her tone was much more breathless than she had intended it to be. "Everything isn't—all right. Can I—can I speak to you for a few minutes?"

"Well, of course." His attention was completely hers in a moment, and he led the way into the nearby drawing-room and made her sit down before he asked anything else. Then standing looking down at her—with a calm air which reassured her a little—he said, "Well, what is the trouble?"

"Your mother has just had a—a rather disturbing letter."

"From Algernon?"

"No. From Felicity."

"From Felicity?" His eyebrows jerked up in surprise. "Why should she write? Why not come and say anything she had to say?"

"Because she"—Nicola cleared her throat nervously—"isn't here any more. She has—gone away."

He frowned.

"But I saw her yesterday—no, the day before yesterday. Why should she go away without telling me?"

"I suppose," Nicola said desperately, "she couldn't face telling you. I know it's going to be a dreadful shock for you, Vaughan, but—she isn't coming back."

He sat down slowly and looked across at Nicola—pale and a little grim but not, she thought, entirely astounded.

"With Algernon—of course?" he said at last.

"She went to—join him."

"Where, Nicola?"

"I'm not very sure. Somewhere abroad. I rather think— America."

"I see."

She wished suddenly that he would show some sort of feeling. Exclaim—protest—rage, even. It would have been so much easier to deal with than this unnatural calm.

When he did speak, what he said was:

"Did you know he was safely abroad?"

"Yes." Nicola deliberately kept her voice steady. "I couldn't tell you, Vaughan, because it would have made things so difficult for you if the police had questioned you again. I thought—we thought ‑"

"Who were 'we'?" he inquired dryly.

"Your—your mother knew, too," she said rather faintly.

"And Felicity, of course?"

She nodded.

He got up abruptly, pushing back his chair, and exclaimed angrily:

"You'll be telling me next that Belinda knew! Did everyone know except me?"

"I'm dreadfully sorry it should seem as though we—we wanted to exclude you. But we knew you would be the one to be questioned. We wanted only to make it easier for you," she insisted earnestly.

"Was that Felicity's chief consideration, too?" he asked, and again his tone was dry.

There was quite a long pause. Then Nicola said steadily:

"No. She thought only of Algernon. I suppose it's better you should know the exact truth. It was Algie she loved. That was the only strong emotion in her life, I think. One can't blame her for that. Where she was wrong was in taking you because you—you were the better match. In a way—except for the manner in which she has done it—I think perhaps she is less to blame now than when she agreed to become engaged to you. At least she has made her choice by a right scale of values at last and—and more or less gone into exile for the man she really does love."

He did not answer that but, strolling over to the window, stood looking out in moody silence. She was poignantly reminded of that first day she had met him, when she had thought him difficult and unreachable. Now, she was almost sure, that rather grim expression hid profound unhappiness.

"I'm sorry," she said gently, when she felt that the silence had extended unbearably. "I expect I talked too much. It's easy to make the excuses when one isn't personally concerned."

"I don't mind your making excuses for Felicity. I don't blame her much either. I blame myself."

"Oh, no!" She was indignant and protesting in a moment. "That's absurd. You have no reason to blame yourself."

"I couldn't hold her in the last few weeks, Nicola. I had— nothing with which to do it."

She was silent, not knowing quite what he meant. And he went on, almost speaking to himself:

"I don't seem very good at human relationships. I loved Ginette—and yet I couldn't save her. Algernon is my brother, and yet he turned to anyone, rather than to me, when he was in trouble. And now Felicity, whom I had undertaken to love and look after, has gone away to what may be an insecure and unhappy life because I could not hold her."

"But it wasn't your fault that you couldn't hold her!" Nicola cried. "I told you, she ‑"

"Oh, yes it was," he replied calmly. "You see, I had ceased to love her."

Nicola's hand flew to her lips, and she stared at him in wide-eyed astonishment.

"What did you say?"

"I'd stopped loving her, Nicola, during the last few weeks. I knew it quite well. I tried not to make the slightest difference in my manner or my attitude to her. I thought I had succeeded. But, you see, she must have known ‑"

"Rubbish!" Nicola's angry exclamation cut across what he was saying with a knife-thrust of crude common sense. "She was much too concerned with her own feelings and reactions to notice yours."

He actually gave a slight laugh of protest at that, and Nicola, gathering courage, came and stood close beside him.

"I didn't mean to tell you, because there is a—a sort of decent reticence about these things that one tries to preserve. But I think peace of mind is more precious than pride, and, at the risk of hurting your pride, I must insist that it was Algie she loved all along. And he loved her, too—as far as he could. She gave it away half a dozen times when she talked to me. And he wanted me to take his signet ring to her ‑"

"When was that?"

"Oh ‑" She looked rather taken aback, and then since all the cards seemed to be grouped on the table, she told him briefly about her journey to the cottage with Mrs. Colwell's money. "It was then he wanted me to take his ring to Felicity. I think it had some—some romantic significance for them. Because, when I refused to take it, he wrote to her and told her there was something he had wanted me to bring to her. She • questioned me about it, and I had to tell her what it was. And she said, 'I think—I understand'—just like that. As though the sending of the ring had some special meaning for her. She must have heard from him again, the day before yesterday, and she had made up her mind by then to join him. Nothing you could have done or felt would have stopped her, Vaughan. Do believe me."

She had put her hand on his arm in her eagerness, and he covered it with his for a moment.

"You're very anxious to reassure me, aren't you?" He smiled slightly.

"I don't want you hurt any more. That's why –"

She stopped. But he glanced at her questioningly.

"That's why—what?"

Nicola bit her lip.

"I hadn't really the—the right to tell you all this. Felicity wrote and asked your mother to break the news to you. I— I know it seems interfering of me. But it—hurts so, to be told anything like this without—without sympathy. I thought maybe—I could do it better."

"Nobody could have done it better than you did," he said gravely.

She smiled a little.

"But it was easier than I expected—since you didn't love Felicity any longer."

"Yes. You didn't know that, though, did you? You were willing to take on the harder task if necessary."

"Well—of course." She didn't know quite what to add to that. And after a moment she asked irresistibly, "What made you think—made you know that you didn't love Felicity any longer?"

"You did, of course," he said, and put his arm round her.

"I—I did?" She was suddenly trembling.

"Didn't you know that?"

"No! How could I know? What did I do—what did I say— that made you realise that?"

He smiled.

"I don't know that you actually did or said anything, my darling. You just were yourself."

"I don't understand!" she cried. "At least—I don't think— I don't dare ‑"

He laughed then—joyously and triumphantly, as she had never heard him laugh before. And the next moment she was in his arms and he was kissing her, and she was clinging to him and returning his kisses, while they exchanged little incoherent snatches of sentences which meant something to them but could have meant nothing to anyone else.

"I can't believe it!" she exclaimed at last. "I don't see, even now, how—how it's all happened. I've known so long that I loved you, but ‑"

"Oh, my dear, have you?" He passed a very tender hand over her hair. "Have you been very unhappy?"

"Not really. Except when I looked into the future too much. It was so wonderful to be able to do things for you, and to live in the same house with you, to have you always near."

He took her face between his hands then, and looked at her as she had always wanted to have him look at her—only it had never seemed anything but a lovely dream before.

"Darling, you're going on living in the same house with me, and having me always near. But in future it's I who will find it wonderful doing things for you."

She laughed and hugged him.

"I'll still want it the other way round sometimes," she insisted, which made him laugh.

They sat in the window-seat for a long time after that, and talked a little of the past, seen through the golden light of their new discovery, but very much more of the future.

They were still sitting there when, quite unexpectedly, the door opened and Mrs. Colwell came into the room.

Nicola—who had forgotten her and indeed everyone except Vaughan and herself during the last hour—started almost guiltily to her feet. But Vaughan rose much more leisurely and stood smiling down at his small, beautiful mother.

"Well, have you settled everything?" she inquired briskly.

"More or less," Vaughan said almost lazily.

"I—I told Vaughan about Felicity," Nicola explained, rather confusedly. "I—thought it was best."

"Much best. I hoped you would," Mrs. Colwell replied composedly.

Nicola's eyes opened wide.

"Did you—mean me to?"

"Why, certainly." Mrs. Colwell sat down in the high-backed chair which her son brought forward for her. "Why else do you suppose I overplayed my part as the unsympathetic parent?" And she gave her thin, rather cold smile. "Not that I lay any claims to be a sympathetic one. But I am not entirely unnatural, as I am sure you have been thinking in the last hour or two, Nicola."

Nicola bit her lip and blushed slightly.

"I—haven't really been thinking of you at all in the last half-hour," she confessed, which appeared to cause Mrs. Colwell a certain amount of sardonic amusement.

"I gather you have been doing a little stage-managing on your own, Mother?" Vaughan said dryly, but he smiled at his mother.

"No. Nothing as definite as that. I never interfere to that extent," Mrs. Colwell replied coolly. "I merely—created a certain mood in dear Nicola, and left the rest to chance."

Nicola laughed rather vexedly.

"I thought you told me it was always a mistake to try to regulate someone else's conduct by one's own outlook," she said.

"I think the expression I used was 'nearly always'," Mrs. Colwell replied imperturbably. "And if you are going to be my daughter-in-law—which my instinct tells me you are— please, dear child, don't take to analysing phrases too closely. It's such an uncomfortable habit. You may kiss me now." And she offered a cool, charming cheek for Nicola's rather diffident kiss.

Vaughan stood watching these proceedings with a good deal of amusement. Then he put his arm round Nicola again, and said:

"Was there anything that you didn't guess about all this. Mamma?"

"Only the timing." Mrs. Colwell settled her beautiful lace scarf round her shoulders more becomingly. "But I'm glad you didn't waste any more time. Nicola needs to have her status at Elm Court clearly defined. She manages Belinda better than any of us."

"Oh—Belinda!" Nicola suddenly remembered remorsefully that she had sent the little girl away with less than her usual affectionate consideration. And, going to the door, she called, "Belinda dear, where are you?"

Belinda came running downstairs, apparently harbouring no resentment over the recent slight.

"Grandma says Felicity's gone away," she announced, bouncing into the room. "Oh—hallo. Uncle Vaughan. I'm sorry. Did you know? About Felicity, I mean."

"Even before your tactful announcement—yes," her uncle told her.

"Well, I'm sorry. But I can think of other people I'd rather not part with," Belinda said candidly, looking at Nicola.

"To tell the truth, so can I," her uncle admitted, and drew Nicola back into the circle of his arm, as though he could hardly bear to have her away from his side.

"Oh ‑" said Belinda, and stared at this unfamiliar grouping.

"As a matter of fact, Belinda—I know it will be a surprise for you—but I am going to marry your Uncle Vaughan," Nicola explained.

"It isn't a surprise at all," retorted Belinda indignantly.

"It's only taken you all a long time to do what I suggested right in the beginning."

"Really? I don't seem to remember your proposing to Nicola on my behalf," Vaughan said, dryly amused.

"No. But I said right away that she ought to come and live here always," Belinda insisted. "And the trouble I had! First of all getting her here for a few days, and then a few weeks, and then until you were to marry Felicity. It was my idea in the beginning, and I think it was a good one."

"I think it was superb, Belinda," her uncle said gravely and earnestly. "Thank you, my dear." And he bent and kissed her with what Belinda considered to be becoming gratitude.