Pimpernel and Rosemary

She prattled on as merry as a bird. She seemed twenty years younger all of a sudden-her step was light and springy, her eyes were bright, her voice was fresh and clear. Rosemary kept on repeating to herself:

"She need not know for at least three weeks. She need not know, and I must pretend-pretend-at any cost. She will know soon enough, poor darling."

And Rosemary did manage to pretend; for the next three hours she was just an automaton, wound up to play a certain part. To everyone she had to pretend-to Elza, to Maurus, to that odious Naniescu, and even to Jasper. The worst of all was pretending to Jasper, for from this she got no reprieve. Jasper's kind, anxious eyes were on her all the time, but she would not let him see that she was anxious about Peter. Somehow the episode about Peter had made everything so much worse. Not that she harboured the thought for a moment that Peter was intriguing with Naniescu. That, of course, was out of the question. He had come to arrange something about a cricket match, and, of course, he had to see Naniescu about it, get his permission, and so on. There were ten chances to one that Peter had written to her and told her all about it, and that his letter had gone astray. No, no, no! There could be no thought of an intrigue between Peter and these Roumanians; but Rosemary felt that Jasper thought there was, and was vaguely pitying her because of some unknown treachery on Peter's part. It was odious!

And with it all Elza's obvious happiness was almost intolerable to witness, and even Maurus departed from his habitual ill-temper to exchange facetious remarks with Naniescu. Time seemed leaden-footed. The interminable luncheon dragged on wearily, as did the hour of coffee and liqueurs, of endless small talk and constant pretence. But even the worst moments in life must become things of the past sooner or later, and when Rosemary began to feel that she could not stand the whole thing any longer, she found that Naniescu and his officers were actually taking their leave.

After luncheon Jasper was quite charming. He had thought the whole matter over, he said, and decided that it was in his power to make a personal appeal to the King in favour of Philip and Anna. He had certainly rendered more than one signal service to Roumania during and after the war, and he thought that in these countries personal influence counted a great deal. At any rate, there would be no harm in trying, and he would start for Bucharest immediately. He had spoken about the proposed journey to Elza and Maurus, alleging official business, and Elza had already arranged that he should be driven into Cluj in time for the afternoon express. Rosemary's heart was at once filled with gratitude; she felt angry with herself for having mistrusted him. She threw herself whole-heartedly into the preparations for his journey, lolled her troubled soul with the belief that it would prove to be the happy issue out of this terrible situation. When it was time for him to go she wished him God-speed with more fervour and affection than she had shown him for days.

"Bar accidents," he assured her, "I shall be back in a fortnight. If I have definite good news to report I will wire. But even if you don't hear from me, I shall be back, as I say, in fifteen days."

"I shall count the hours until your return," she said.

"And in the meanwhile," he urged with deep earnestness, "you will do nothing without consulting me."

She smiled at this want of logic, so unlike her methodical husband.

"I could not consult you, dear," she said. "You won't be here."

"No, no, I know," he insisted; "but I want you to promise that you will leave things as they are until my return. I don't want you to give anything away to Elza, or to Philip or Anna. Promise me."

"Of course I'll promise," replied readily. "God knows I don't want to be the one to break the awful news to them."

"Or to Peter," he added gravely.

"Peter?"

"I want you to promise me-to promise, Rosemary, that you will not speak of this miserable affair to Peter Blakeney."

Then, as she seemed to hesitate, vaguely puzzled at his desperate earnestness, he again insisted:

"Promise me, Rosemary, whatever you may hear, whatever you may see, whatever may be planned by Elza or anybody else, promise me that you will not speak of it to Peter."

"But Jasper," she exclaimed, "why? Of course I will promise, if you wish it, but frankly I don't understand why you insist, so solemnly too," she added, trying to assume a lightness of heart which she was far from feeling. Then she went on more gravely: "I could trust Peter as I would myself."

"You can put it down to nerves," Jasper said, with the ghost of a smile, "to intuition or foreboding, or merely to jealousy and my wretched character, to anything you please, my dear one. But promise me! Promise me that everything in connexion with this miserable affair will remain just between you and me. Let the others talk, guess, plan. Promise me that you will never speak of it with Peter. Promise me, or I will throw up the sponge, remain here to look after you, and let Naniescu do his worst with the lot of them."

Thus, alternately demanding, entreating, threatening, he extracted the promise from her, even though her heart cried out against what she felt was treachery to Peter. Jasper's insistence filled her with a vague sense of foreboding not unmixed with fear; and yet, the very next moment, as soon as he had her promise, he became tender, soft, loving, as if trying to make her forget his solemn earnestness of a while ago. He took her in his arms and gazed into her eyes with an intensity of longing which made her own heart ache with self-reproach.

"If God there be," he whispered softly, as if to himself, "it was cruel of Him to make you so beautiful-and so desirable."

Again his mood had changed. Tenderness had turned into passion, fierce, almost primeval, and he held her now more like a man defending the greatest treasure he possessed on God's earth than like a husband taking affectionate leave of his wife.

"If I should lose you, Rosemary," he murmured, "because of this."

She tried to laugh and to speak flippantly. "Lose me?" she said. "You have little chance of doing that, my dear, for this or any other cause. Naniescu has not the power of life and death over me," she added more seriously.

There was something about Jasper at this moment that she could not entirely fathom. Twice before she had seen him in these moods of violent passion akin almost to savagery, when she felt utterly helpless and absolutely in his power. She had the feeling that when he was in one of these moods he was capable of any violence against her if she dared to disobey or resist. Not that Rosemary was afraid; she had never in her life been afraid of anyone; but she had always been mistress of herself, and at this moment, held tightly by the man to whom she had sworn love and fealty, she felt like a slave of olden times in the grip of her lord.

"You-you will care for me some day, Rosemary?" he asked with passionate earnestness. "Say that you will some day, when all this-all this is forgotten, and we are back again in England, free to live our own lives, free to love. You will care for me then, Rosemary, will you not? For I could not live beside you for long, feeling all the time that you did not belong to me with your whole soul. You have such haunting eyes-eyes such as pixies and fairies have-maddening eyes. I should go crazy presently if I failed to kindle the love-light in those eyes."

He kissed her eyes, her mouth, her throat. Rosemary would have struggled, would have screamed if she dared. Fortunately a knock at the door and the entrance of one of the menservants, who came to fetch milord's luggage, put an end to a situation which Rosemary found very difficult to endure. After the man had gone the spell appeared to be broken. Jasper became once more the courteous, grave man of the world he had always been. The episode of a moment ago did not seem to have occurred at all, as far as he was concerned, and while Rosemary felt her teeth chattering and the palms of her hands were covered with a cold sweat, Jasper moved about the room and spoke to her about his proposed journey, his certain return in a fortnight, as if nothing had happened.

CHAPTER XVI

The carriage which took Jasper to Cluj brought back Philip and Anna. After that the house was full of animation, like a beehive in May. Rosemary only saw the two young people for a moment. She felt a stranger in this family gathering, and her heart was so heavy that she soon found a pretext for going up to her room. Later on she pleaded a headache. Kind and hospitable as were these dear people, Rosemary felt that they must wish to be alone amongst themselves after the terrible time they had all gone through. They would have so much to talk over that the presence of a stranger, even so welcome as one as Rosemary Tarkington, must of necessity be irksome. It was clear to her from the first that Philip and Anna knew little, if anything, of the conditions attached to their release. Philip talked lightly of their being under surveillance for a time, and then added quite gaily that he would gladly lead the life of a hermit in Kis-Imre and never go outside the gates until the present clouds blew over. He gave himself up wholly to the joy of watching his mother's happiness and seeing her dear eyes beaming on her returned boy. Altogether he was more like a schoolboy who by a fluke has escaped punishment than a man conscious of a deadly peril that had not ceased to threaten him.

They all sat up talking late into the evening, and when Rosemary found herself at last alone in her room, trying to think things out before she went to bed, little Anna came up to her. The child looked hollow-eyed and grave; the joy that had been on her face when she first found herself in this second home of hers had all gone. She looked old, wan and tired out.

Rosemary put out her arms, and Anna ran up to her and snuggled up close to her, just like a child. For a long time she was quite silent, with her head against her friend's shoulder, her little thin hands held in Rosemary's kind, firm grasp. Now and again a hot tear would fall on Rosemary's hands. Anna was crying quietly to herself, and Rosemary waited until the girl was calm enough to speak.

"I don't understand the whole thing, Rosemary," were the first words that Anna spoke.

"What is it you don't understand, dear?" Rosemary asked.

"It is not like them to be lenient, is it?" the girl retorted, looking up with quick, eager inquiry into her friend's face.

"Oh, in this case," Rosemary rejoined vaguely, "you are both so young!"

Anna shook her head vigorously.

"That wouldn't worry them," she said, "after all the trouble they must have taken to track us down."

"You were caught in the act, I suppose?" Rosemary queried.

Anna nodded.

"Yes," she said. "And that was strange too. I had all my parcels ready-the usual ones for Budapest, and Philip's manuscript at the bottom of a box of vegetable seeds. Half a dozen soldiers and an officer came into the shop and walked straight up to the place where the parcels were stacked. They seemed to know all about everything, for the officer just ordered his men to undo all the parcels, and, of course, there was Philip's manuscript."

"There is nothing strange in all that, Anna," Rosemary said. "I have no doubt in my mind that you both have been watched for some time by secret service men, and at last they closed their trap on you."

But once more Anna shook her head.

"I can't explain what I mean," she said, and puckered her fine straight brows together. "It is a kind of intuition that came to me when I saw those soldiers walk in. I am absolutely convinced that we were not denounced by regular Government spies. They are too clumsy, and we were too careful. I am certain," she reiterated obstinately, "that we were not denounced by one of them."

"By whom, then?"

"Ah, that I don't know. It is an awful feeling I have. You know I never believed in all that so-called psychic nonsense which is so fashionable just now, but the feeling I have is not just an ordinary one. It is so strong that I cannot fight against it. It is a feeling that eyes-eyes-are always watching me and Philip-cruel eyes-eyes that wish us evil-that will us to do something foolish, unconsidered, something that will get us again into trouble, and for good this time."

"You are overwrought, Anna dear," Rosemary put in gently. "And no wonder! Of course, we all know that there are Government spies all over the place, and you and Philip will have to be doubly careful in the future' but here in Kis-Imre you are among friends. Your aunt Elza's servants are all of them Hungarian and thoroughly to be trusted."

Anna said nothing. She was staring straight out in front of her, as if trying to meet those mysterious eyes which were for ever watching her. An involuntary cry of horror rose to Rosemary's lips.

"Anna!" she exclaimed, "you don't think that I—"

But before she could complete her sentence Anna's arms were round her.

"Of course not. Of course not," the girl murmured tenderly. "Rosemary darling, of course not!"

"I never spoke about your affairs to a single soul, Anna" Rosemary said gravely. "I give you my solemn word of honour that I never even mentioned the thing to my husband until after your arrest, when, of course, all the facts became public property."

"I know, Rosemary, I know," Anna repeated. "I would trust you with every secret. I would trust you with my life-with Philip's life."

"And you did not trust anyone else?" Rosemary asked.

"I never breathed a word about it to a living soul, except to you and Peter Blakeney."

"Peter knew?"

"Yes, Peter knew."

"You wrote to him?" Rosemary insisted. "Ah, then I understand. Your letters were held up by the censor, and—"

"No, I never wrote to Peter what Philip and I were doing; but you know he arrived in Cluj the day before I was arrested. He came to arrange some cricket match or other between Roumanians and Hungarians. I don't know anything about cricket, but, of course, Peter was full of it. He came to see me at my lodgings quite unexpectedly. I was so surprised to see him, and so happy, as I am very, very fond of Peter. We talked till late into the evening, and somehow I had to tell him everything. But except for that one talk with Peter, and the one I had with you, I never breathed a word about what Philip and I were doing, not to a living soul!"

Rosemary said nothing for the moment. Indeed there was nothing much that she could say. Little Anna had got hold of the idea that some mysterious agency had been at work and brought about her and Philip's arrest. But, after all, what did it matter? Professional spies or insidious traitor? What difference did it make in the end? Anna was frightened because she feared a fresh denunciation. She did not know that her poor life was already forfeit, that she was just a mouse whom the cat had allowed to run free for a moment or two, and that she would be pounced upon again unless her friend Rosemary whom she trusted with her whole soul, bought freedom and life for her.

But it was not thoughts of Anna that sealed Rosemary's lips at this moment and left her mute, motionless, like an insentient log, with Anna's cold little hand held tightly in her own. Anna had not spoken of her activities or her plans to anyone except to Peter. And Jasper had extracted a promise from her, Rosemary, that she would not speak of Philip's or Anna's affairs to Peter. What connexion was there between Jasper's insistence and that other awful thought which, strive as she might, would haunt Rosemary's brain like a hideous ghoul risen out of hell? What mystery lurked in the denunciation of these children, in their release, in the alternative which Naniescu had placed before her? What hidden powers were at work, threatening her with shame and the children with death?

Rosemary felt stifled. Rising abruptly, she went to the window and stepped out on the balcony. The moon was up, a honey-coloured, waning moon that threw its cool, mysterious light on park-land and lake and the distant pine forest beyond. Immediately below the balcony a bed of tuberoses, with wax-like corollas that shimmered white and spectral, sent their intoxicating odour through the balmy air. And against the background of dense shrubberies a couple of fireflies gleamed and darted aimlessly, ceaselessly, in and out of the shadows. Rosemary, seeing them, was reminded of what Anna had said just now-that eyes were for ever looking at her, cruel eyes, eyes that were on the watch, spying, spying.

Suddenly she clapped her hand to her mouth, smothering a sharp cry that had risen to her throat; and instinctively she stepped back into the room and hastily closed the window.

"What is it, Rosemary darling?" Anna asked.

"Nothing, dearie, nothing," Rosemary replied quickly. "The smell of those tuberoses made me feel queer. That's all."

She could not tell Anna that while she watched the fireflies, and the air was so still, so still that not a blade of grass shivered, and even the leaves of the aspen were at rest, she had perceived a tremor amongst the laurel bushes and seen some of the tall branches held back by a hand, each finger of which was outlined by the silvery light of the moon. And above the hand she had sensed a pair of eyes that were looking up at her.

She tried to talk lightly with Anna, to infuse into her some of the buoyancy of mind which she was far from feeling herself. She was sure that Anna had a vague consciousness of the danger that hung over her and those she cared for; the only thing she could not know was that her fate and theirs lay in the hands of the friend whom she trusted. How would she-how would they all-bear the knowledge when it came to them, as come it must? How would she, Rosemary, face the reproach which, even if unspoken by them, would haunt her to the end of her life: "You might have saved us, if you would."

CHAPTER XVII

And it was that spectre which from that hour haunted Rosemary; it would not allow her to rest at night; it dogged her steps by day. When she walked in the park and the soft summer breeze stirred the branches of Lombardy poplars or the stately plumes of maize, ghostly voices would seem to be whispering all around her: "Life and liberty for Philip and Anna! Life and liberty for those two children who love and trust you, who know nothing of the fate that hangs over them!" And when she was in the house at meals or in the family circle, with Elza radiating happiness and even Maurus unbending, with Philip almost feverishly gay and Anna thoughtful, the eyes of all these kind, dear people whom she loved seemed full of reproach to the one woman who could save them-if she would.

Then Rosemary, unable to pretend any longer, would run up to her room; and she-one of the most sane, most level-headed women in this neurotic age-would throw herself on her knees and pray to be taken out of it all. Oh! to be out of it-underground-anywhere! Just to be out of it, not to see those smiles, that happiness, that contentment which she knew must presently end in a devastating catastrophe. To be out of it when the time came-in a few weeks-days-hours!

Hour followed hour, dull and leaden-footed. And they were all so happy at Kis-Imre! Suspecting nothing, knowing nothing, whilst Rosemary felt her self-control slipping away from her day by day. At times she felt as if she could not endure the situation and longer, as if she must tell one of them. Tell Elza or Maurus, or the children! Surely they should know! There comes a time when a doctor, knowing that his patient cannot recover, is bound in all humanity to tell him. Then surely it was Rosemary's duty to say to them all: "You don't know! You have not guessed! But you are doomed. Doomed! Philip and Anna to death! You Elza and Maurus to worse than death—limitless sorrow. Now you are just living on a volcano. In another few days-twenty, nineteen, eighteen-the flames will break through, the earth will totter under your feet, and everything you care for in the world will be engulfed. You will perish. Yes, you! All of you! And then you will know about me! How I might have saved you and did not. And you will hate me as no woman has ever been hated before. And I shall go forth into the vast wilderness which is called the world. And I, too, shall perish of sorrow and endless regret!"

She had not again seen those mysterious eyes which that evening, while little Anna was talking, had peered at her from behind the laurel bushes; and she was far too sensible to dwell on what might only, after all, have been the creation of overwrought nerves.

The time was drawing near for Jasper's return. "Fifteen days" he had said; and she knew that, bar accidents, he would keep his word. But she had no news of him, and after the first week she ceased to expect any. She would not own, even to herself, that she had already ceased to build hopes in that direction. Jasper had promised to wire as soon as he heard anything definite, so in this case no news was bad news. Dear, kind Jasper! he knew how miserably anxious she was! He would not keep good news from her-not one hour.

It was on the tenth day that Peter arrived at the castle. He had announced his coming twenty-four hours previously, and in a moment there was excitement from attic to cellar in the house. Everybody seemed to be arranging something, planning something. Tennis excursions, dancing! Peter was such a good dancer! They would have the gipsies over from Bonczhida. That was the finest band in the whole of Transylvania; and they would ask the Keletys over from Hajdu and the Fejérs from Henger, and perhaps Aunt Charlotte could be persuaded to come and bring Marie. There was some talk of private theatricals, of tableaux, a tennis tournament, perhaps a cricket match, English fashion. Peter was so clever at all that sort of thing! Rosemary was consulted about the cricket match and the tournament, for these were to be done on English lines! But the dancing and the acting and the picnics, these were to be truly and entirely Hungarian-pre-war Hungarian, the gayest, merriest things darling Rosemary had ever seen.

How much she had looked forward to Peter's coming, Rosemary did not know until after she had seen him. What hopes she had built on his mere presence, on his nearness, she did not own to herself until afterwards. He had not been in the house many hours before she realized that he had changed. Not changed for the worse, of course not-but changed.

He seemed younger, more boyish-more English in many ways. At one time the Hungarian strain had been very conspicuous in Peter-his tempestuous love-making, his alternating moods of fatalism and rebellion had always reminded Rosemary of those barbaric chieftains-his forbears about whom she loved to read-who had been up and fought the Turks, while the rest of Europe only trembled at thought of their approach.

But now Peter was much more like the conventional young English athlete: not very loquacious, very placid, ashamed of showing emotion or excitement, standing about for the most part with his hands in his trousers pockets contemplating the toes of his boots, and smoking innumerable cigarettes. He had not seemed like this at first. He arrived in the late afternoon, and Rosemary was downstairs in the paved courtyard when the carriage drove in through the gates, with its four spanking greys shining with lather, for the day had been very hot and the roads were dusty. Peter was on the box, having dislodged the coachman, who sat beside him, the groom being relegated to the cushioned seat of the victoria.

There was such a halloing and a shouting, everyone screaming a welcome, grooms rushing to hold the horses, the greys pawing and champing and shorting, that Rosemary hardly saw Peter when he threw the reins to the coachman, jumped down from the box, and was lost in a forest of welcoming arms that hid him completely from view.

It was only after dinner, when the whole company went out into the garden to get a breath of air, that Rosemary found herself for a few moments alone with him. It had been desperately hot indoors, and the noise of all these dear people all talking and laughing at the same time had been overpowering. Fortunately everyone thought it would be lovely in the garden, and still laughing and chattering they trooped out like a brood of chickens let out of a coop. Rosemary had wandered on ahead of the others, and presently she turned down the path that ran along the perennial border, now a riot of colour and a tangle of late lilies, crimson pentstemons and evening primroses.

Rosemary did not hear Peter coming. No one ever dressed for dinner at Kis-Imre, and Peter had his tennis shoes on, and the rubber soles made not the slightest sound upon the smooth gravel path. She had stopped to look at a clump of tiger lilies, when suddenly a wonderful sense of well-being seemed to descend upon her soul. It was as if she had stepped out of a boat that had been tossed about a stormy sea, and had all of a sudden set her foot upon firm ground. The first words he said were so like the foolish, lighthearted Peter she knew.

"You wonderful pixie!" he said, "I can't believe that it is really you!"

She did not immediately turn to look at him, but went on studying the markings on the lilies; then she said, as indifferently as she could:

"Why didn't you let me know sooner, Peter, that you were coming to Transylvania? In fact," she went on coolly, "you never did let me know at all. I first heard through-others that you were here."

"Who told you?" he asked.

"I think Jasper did first," she replied. "He had heard the news from General Naniescu."

Then only did she turn and look at him. She had to look up, because, though she herself was very tall, one always had to look up at Peter, who was a young giant. At this moment she certainly did not think that he was changed. He looked just the same, with his very boyish face and laughing grey eyes, and his fair hair that so often looked as if it had been Marcel-waved. He was looking down at her when she turned to him, and suddenly he said:

"You don't look happy, Rosemary!"

Of course she laughed and told him not to make silly remarks. How could she help being happy here with these dear, kind people? Never, never in all her life had she met with such kindness and hospitality. Peter shrugged his shoulders. He thrust his hands in the pockets of his flannel trousers and looked down at the toes of his shoes.

"Very well," he said lightly, "if you won't tell me, you won't. And that's that. But let me tell you this: though I dare say I am a bit of a fool, I am not quite such an ass as not to see the difference in you. You've gotten thinner. When I first arrived and shook hands with you, your hand felt hot, and your eyes—"

He broke off abruptly, and then with sudden irrelevance: "Where's Jasper?"

"Gone to—," she began, and suddenly came to a halt. When she promised Jasper not to breathe a word of Philip's and Anna's affairs to Peter, she had not realized how difficult this would be. Would she be breaking her promise if she now told Peter that Jasper was in Bucharest. He would ask questions, more questions which Rosemary's promise bound her not to answer.

"He has been called away on business," she said curtly.

Her hesitation had only lasted a second or two; she hoped that Peter had not noticed it. Anyway, when he asked: "To Budapest?" she replied, without hesitation this time: "Yes, to Budapest." And she added quite gaily: "He'll be back at the end of the week. You can't think, Peter, how I miss him when he is away! Perhaps that is why I am looking thin, and why my hands are hot."

"Perhaps," Peter assented laconically.

Then somehow the conversation flagged, and all the happy feeling that Rosemary had experienced when Peter first stood near her slipped away from her. She suddenly felt cold, although the evening was so hot that a little while ago she had scarcely been able to breathe. At some little distance behind her Philip's voice sounded cheerful and homely, and Maurus Imrey's throaty laugh and Elza's happy little giggle rang through the sweet-scented evening air. Poor Rosemary shivered.

"Shall we walk on," she asked, "Or wait for the others?"

"Let's walk on," Peter replied; then added in a clumsy, boyish fashion: "Rather!"

They walked on side by side. Rosemary, at a loss what to say next, had thrown out an inquiry about the cricket match. This set Peter talking. All at once he threw off his abrupt, constrained air, and prattled away nineteen to the dozen. The cricket match was going to be a huge success. Didn't Rosemary think it was a grand idea? Talk about the League of Nations, or whatever the thing was called! In Peter's opinion, there was nothing like a jolly good cricket or football match to bring people together. Make them understand one another, was Peter's motto. Of course, all these dagoes over here had got to learn to be proper sports. No sulking if they got beaten. Peter would see to that. Anyhow, the old General What's-his-name had been a brick. He had helped Peter no end to get the Roumanian team together, and had given them all free passes to Hódmezö, where the match would take place. Hódmezö was in Hungary, and old What's-his-name-meaning Naniescu-said he would rather the Roumanian team went to Hungary than that the Hungarian team came over here. Well, Peter didn't mind which. It was going to be a topping affair. He was going to captain the Roumanian team, and Payson was captaining the Hungarians. Did Rosemary know Payson? Jolly chap with a ripping wife-done splendid work in the Air Force during the war. He had something to do with the Military Commission on disarmaments. He was at Budapest now, and Jasper would probably see him while he was there. Payson was coming over to Hódmezö by aeroplane. Wouldn't that create a sensation. There was a splendid landing ground quite close to Hódmezö fortunately. Payson's wife was coming with him. She was so keen on flying. Ripping couple, they were! Didn't Rosemary think so? Oh! and Peter had had telegrams of good wishes from no end of people, and a jolly letter from dear old Plum Warner. Did Rosemary know Plum Warner? There was a cricketer if you like! No one like him, in Peter's opinion. The science of the man! Well, the dagoes should learn that cricket is the finest game in the world! Didn't Rosemary agree with him?

Rosemary gave monosyllabic replies whenever Peter gave her the chance of putting in a word. She could not help smiling at his enthusiasm, of course. It was so young, so English, so thoroughly, thoroughly fine! But somehow she could not recapture that lovely feeling of security, that sheer joy in having Peter near her, and she kept asking herself whether it was really Peter who had changed-who had become younger, or she who had grown old. In this youthful athlete with his self-assurance and his slang, she vainly sought the wayward, sometimes moody, always captivating Peter, whose tempestuous love-making had once swept her off her feet.

At one moment she tried to lead the conversation into a more serious channel: "How do you think Anna is looking?" she asked abruptly.

"A bit peaky." Peter replied lightly, "poor little mole! When you go back to England," he went on more gravely, "you ought to take her with you. It would do her all the good in the world. Take her out of herself, I mean."

"She wouldn't come," Rosemary replied earnestly.

"Don't you think so?"

"Why, Peter," she retorted, feeling exasperated with him for this air of indifference even where Anna was concerned, "you know Anna would not come. For one thing," Rosemary added impulsively, "I don't suppose she would be allowed to."

"You mean her mother wouldn't let her?"

"No," she replied laconically. "I didn't mean that."

"Well, then?" he retorted. Then, as Rosemary, shocked, angry, remained silent, holding her lips tightly pressed together, almost as if she were afraid that words would slip out against her will, Peter shrugged his broad shoulders and rejoined flippantly:

"Oh, I suppose you mean old What's-his-name-Naniescu-and all that rubbish. I don't think he would worry much. He has been a brick, letting Anna and Philip out like that. I expect he would just as soon see them both out of the country as not. Jolly good thing it would be for both of them! They would learn some sense, the monkeys!"

He paused and looked round at Rosemary. Then, as she seemed to persist in her silence, he insisted:

"Don't you agree with me?"

"Perhaps," she replied, with a weary sigh.

"Anyway, you'll think it over, won't you?" Peter went on. "I am sure you could fix it up with old Naniescu. He admires you tremendously, you know."

It was all wrong, all wrong. Peter used to be so fond of little Anna. "Give her a kiss for me," were almost the last words he had spoken to Rosemary on the day of her wedding. His own affairs evidently pushed every other consideration into the remotest corner of his brain; and cricket matches were apparently of more importance than the danger which threatened Anna and Philip. Nor had Rosemary any longer the desire to break her promise to Jasper. She no longer wished to speak to Peter about Anna and Philip, or about the horrible alternative which Naniescu had put before her. Peter-this Peter-would not understand. Jasper had not understood either-but he had misunderstood in a different way. Rosemary realized how right he had been to extract that promise from her. Was not Jasper always right? And was it intuition that had prompted him, after all, rather than an attack of jealousy of which Rosemary, in her heart, had been so ready to accuse him?

Suddenly she felt a longing to get away from Peter, from this Peter whom she neither knew nor trusted. "I'll go in now, I think," she said abruptly; "the dew is rising, and my shoes are very thin."

And she started to walk more quickly. Slowly the shades of evening had been drawing in. Rosemary had not noticed before how dark it was getting. The line of shrubbery behind the perennial border was like a solid wall; and on the other side of the path the stretch of lawn, with its great clumps of pampas grass and specimen trees, became merged in the gathering shadows. Beyond the lawn glimmered the lights of the chateau, and the veranda in front of the drawing-room was like a great patch of golden light, broken by the long, straight lines of its supporting columns. There was no moon, only an infinity of stars; and in the flower border the riot of colour had faded into the gloom, leaving just the white flowers-the nicotiana, the Madonna lilies, a few violas-to break the even mantle spread by the night.

From the direction of the chateau there came a loud call of "Hallo!" to which Peter gave a lusty response. A voice shouted: "We are going in!"

"Right-o!" Peter responded. "We'll come in too!"

Then suddenly he gave a bound, and in an instant had leaped the border and disappeared in the shrubbery beyond. Rosemary, taken completely by surprise, had come to a halt. From the shrubbery there came a loud cry of terror, then a swear-word from Peter, and finally a string of ejaculations, all in Hungarian, and of distressful appeals for mercy in the name of all the saints in the calendar. The next moment Peter's white flannels glimmered through the foliage, and a second or two later he reappeared lower down, coming up the path and half dragging, half pushing in front of him a huddled-up mass, scantily clothed in ragged shirt and trousers, and crowned with a broad-brimmed hat, from beneath which came a succession of dismal howls.

"What is it?" Rosemary cried.

"That's what I want to know," was Peter's reply. "I caught sight of this blighter sneaking in the shrubbery, and got him by the ear, which he does not seem to like, eh, my friend?"

He gave the ear which he held between his fingers another tweak, and in response drew a howl from his victim, fit to wake the seven sleepers.

"Mercy, gracious lord! Mercy on a poor man! I was not doing anything wrong; I swear by holy Joseph I was not doing anything wrong!"

The creature, whoever he was, succeeded in wriggling himself free of Peter's unpleasant hold. At once he turned to flee, but Peter caught him by the shoulder, and proceeded this time to administer something more severe in the way of punishment.

"Leave the man alone, Peter," Rosemary cried indignantly. "You have no right to ill-use him like that!"

"Oh, haven't I? We'll soon see about that!" Peter retorted roughly. "Now then, my friend," he went on, speaking in Hungarian to the bundle of rags that had collapsed at his feet, "listen to me. You have tasted the weight of my boot on your spine, so you know pretty well what you can expect if you don't tell me at once what you are doing at this hour of the night in the gracious count's garden?"

The man, however, seemed unable to speak for the moment; loud hiccoughs shook his tall, spare frame. He held his two hands against the base of his desperate contortions in a vain attempt to get his right shoulder out of Peter's grip.

"Peter," Rosemary cried again, "let the poor wretch go. You must! Or I shall hate you."

But Peter only retorted harshly: "If you weren't here, Rosemary, I'd thrash the vermin to within an inch of his life. Now then," he commanded, "stop that howling. What were you doing in their shrubbery?"

"I only wanted to speak with the gracious countess," the man contrived to murmur at last, through the hiccoughs that still seemed to choke the words in his throat. "I have a message for her!"

"That's why I caught you with this in your belt, eh?" Peter queried sternly, and drew something out of his pocket, which Rosemary could not see; he showed it to the man who promptly made a fresh appeal to the saints.

"The roads are not safe for poor gipsies, gracious lord. And I had the message—"

"Who gave you a message for the gracious countess?" Rosemary asked him gently.

"I-I don't know, gracious lady. A fine gentleman on a horse called to me when I was gathering wood over by the forest of Normafa. He gave me a letter. 'Take it,' he said, 'to the gracious countess over at Kis-Imre, but do not give it into any hands but hers, and only give it to her when she is alone.'"

"Where is the letter?"

"It is here, gracious lady," the man replied and fumbling with the belt that held his ragged trousers round his waist, he drew from underneath it a oiled and crumpled rag that effectively looked like a letter in a sealed envelope. Peter would have snatched it out of his hand, but Rosemary interposed.

"Peter," she said gravely, and stretched a protecting arm over the gipsy's hand, "the man was told not to give it in any hand but Elza's!"

"The man is a liar," Peter riposted harshly.

Just then Philip's voice reached them from across the lawn.

"What are you two doing over there?"

"Philip, is your mother with you?" Rosemary shouted in response.

"Yes! We are just going in."

"Ask her to wait a moment then."

"What has happened?" Elza called.

"Nothing, darling," Rosemary replied. "Send the others in and wait for me, will you?" Then she turned to the gipsy, and said kindly: "Walk beside me, and don't try to run away; the gracious lord will not hurt you if you walk quietly beside me."

And so the three of them walked across the lawn toward the chateau, Rosemary in front, and beside her the gipsy, whose long thin hands almost swept the grass as he walked with bent knees and arched back, throwing from time to time anxious glances behind him. But Peter was lagging behind.

When they were close to the chateau, they saw Elza coming down the veranda steps. Rosemary ordered the gipsy to wait, and ran to meet Elza; in a few words she told her what had occurred. Elza then came across the gravel path, and said to the gipsy: "I am the Countess Imrey. You may give me the letter!"

The man's back became more curved than ever; he nearly touched the ground with his forehead. In the darkness Rosemary seemed to see his long, thin body curling itself up almost into a ball.

"I was told," he murmured meekly, "to give the letter into the hands of the gracious countess only when she was alone."

Instinctively Rosemary turned to look for Peter. To her surprise she saw him just above her, going up the veranda steps. He had his hands in the pockets of his trousers, and he was whistling a tune.

The gipsy whom he had so maltreated a little while ago no longer seemed to interest him. Rosemary called to him rather impatiently:

"Peter!"

He paused and looked down at her. "Hallo!" he said coolly.

"Do you think it is all right for Elza to talk with this man alone?"

Peter shrugged his shoulders. "Why not?" he said, with a laugh.

Then he called out to Elza:

"I say, Aunt Elza, if the wretch should try to kiss you, sing out, won't you?"

Elza laughed good-humouredly.

"Of course I am not afraid," she said. "And I do want to know about this mysterious letter."

Rosemary would have liked to argue the point. She could not understand how it was that Peter took the matter so lightly all of a sudden. However, as Elza was playfully pushing her out of the way, whilst Peter calmly continued to stroll up the stairs, she only said with a final note of earnestness: "I shall be quite close, Elza. You have only to call, you know."

"I know, I know," Elza rejoined, still laughing. "You don't suppose that I am frightened of a gipsy, do you?"

She waited a moment or two until Rosemary was out of sight, then she turned back to the man, and said:

"I am alone now. You may give me the letter."

CHAPTER XVIII

Rosemary went slowly up the veranda steps. She did not feel that it would be loyal to pry into Elza's secrets, but at the same time she wanted to remain well within call. From where she was she could see Peter's broad shoulders blocking the French window which gave on the drawing-room. From somewhere in the house, both above and below stairs, came the sound of laughter and song.

A moment or two later she heard Elza's footsteps behind her on the gravel walk, and presently Elza was there, going up the veranda steps beside Rosemary. She did not say a word, and Rosemary asked no questions. She could see that Elza was preoccupied. She also noticed that the letter-or whatever it was-was not in Elza's hands.

Peter stood aside to allow the two ladies to step into the drawing-room. He asked no questions either, and Elza did not volunteer any information. It seemed as if the incident of the mysterious gipsy had never been. Later on Peter sat down at the piano and played a csàrdàs, for Philip and Anna to dance. They were beautiful dancers, both of them, and it was a pleasure to watch them swaying and bending to the syncopated cadences of the beautiful Hungarian music. Peter, too, had evidently that music in the blood. Rosemary had no idea he could play it so well. He seemed just as excited as the dancers, and accelerated the movements of the csàrdàs until little Anna called for mercy, and even Philip seemed ready to give in. For the time being Rosemary forgot her troubles in the joy of seeing those two enjoying themselves, and the delight of listening to Peter. What a pity, she thought, as she had often done, that he should waste all the poetry, the talent that was in him, and only devote his mind to cricket. She drew close up to the piano, to watch his slender fingers flying over the keys, and as she did so, her glance at one moment wandered to the small what-not in the corner by the piano. There, in the midst of a miscellaneous collection of cigarette boxes, ash-trays, match-boxes, lay a small automatic.

Peter caught her eye, which at the moment expressed a mute inquiry. He shrugged his shoulders and smiled. He had a cigarette in a long holder in the corner of his mouth, but he contrived to murmur:

"Yes, the blighter; wasn't I right to thrash him?"

Rosemary looked across at Elza. She sat quite placidly, as she always did, close to her husband's chair, watching her Philip-her soul in her eyes. She was smiling, and now and then she turned to say a word or two to Maurus; but to Rosemary she still looked preoccupied, and once she caught Elza's large kind eyes fixed upon her with a curious, scrutinizing gaze.

An hour later when Rosemary was in her room and beginning to undress, there was a knock at her door, and Elza came in, with that kindly smile of hers still on her face, but with a troubled look in her eyes.

"May I come in for a moment, darling?" she asked.

Rosemary made her comfortable on the sofa, and sat down beside her. Elza took hold of both her hands and fondled them, stroking them up and down, and she began talking about Philip and Anna, and the dancing and the plans for future parties, and picnics and so on. Rosemary let her prattle on; it was her turn to scrutinize Elza's face closely. That something was troubling this dear, kind creature was obvious. She was, as it were, gathering her moral forces before she broached something unpleasant that she had come to say. It was no use brusquing the matter, and Rosemary entered into Elza's plans, discussed the coming dinner-parties, the proposed lists of guests, talked about Anna's future, and made some remarks about Peter.

This brought the main subject on the tapis.

"Where did you and Peter first see that gipsy?" Elza asked presently.

"He was hiding in the shrubbery," Rosemary replied, "behind the flower border. I didn't see him. Peter saw him and pounced upon him, and dragged him out on to the path."

"Funny he did not just go to the service door and ask for me, wasn't it?"

"That's what Peter thought. I am afraid he treated the poor wretch rather roughly."

"I am sorry he did that," Elza mused, and thoughtfully stroked Rosemary's slender fingers between her own. "The man really had a message for me."

"I know," Rosemary rejoined; "a letter."

"No, it wasn't a letter," Elza said, and looked Rosemary now straight between the eyes. "You know these gipsies are queer people. They have curious gifts of divination and prophecy. This man—"

She seemed to hesitate, her glance wavered, and once more she started mechanically stroking Rosemary's hands.

"But the man had a letter for you, Elza dear," Rosemary insisted. "I saw it in his hand."

"Oh, that was only a blind; and so was his story about the gentleman on a horse. He told me that he had come all the way from Ujlak to speak with me. Ujlak is where I was born, and my dear brother and Peter's mother. My sister-in-law lives there still. Anna was born there, and little Marie. It was my father's home and my grandfather's before him, and our ancestors' for many generations. Well, this gipsy came from there."

In order to speak with you?"

"So he said."

"Well, and what did he have to tell you?" Rosemary asked.

"That he had had a vision. My father had appeared before him in a dream, and told him that he must start at once and seek me. He was to tell me that he whom I love best in all the world is in immediate danger of death."

Rosemary never moved; she was looking straight at Elza. Only when Elza paused, seeming to wait for some word from her, Rosemary said:

"That-wretched creature told you that?"

Elza nodded. She went on simply:

"I see by your face, dear, that he told the truth, not only in that, but in what he said was to follow."

"What was that?"

"He said that the stranger now within our gates knows of this danger, and would confirm what he said. Well, my darling, I only need look at your sweet face to see that that miserable wretch spoke the truth. He was inspired by a dream to come and speak with me. But I would not question him further. Those gipsies often lie, and they will tell you any tale in order to get a few coppers. But I saw your look when I told you what he said, and it is from you that I want the truth. What is the danger that threatens Philip?"

"Elza, darling—" Rosemary murmured.

"I am his mother, you know," Elza interposed, with her gentle, quiet smile. "I must know. He is all the world to me. And as soon as you knew that something threatened him, you should have told me, my darling."

Then, as Rosemary was still fighting with herself, alternately praying to God for guidance, and striving to swallow the tears that were choking her, Elza went on quite quietly:

"It is difficult for you, of course," she said, and patted Rosemary's cheek like an indulgent mother, "but it would have been better to tell me at first. I have had a very, very happy week since the children came home, but looking back on it now, I don't think that I was ever quite free from a vague sort of doubt. I was always a little uneasy, and whenever Philip kissed me, I could not help crying."

Elza had spoken in a curious, dreamy manner, her round blue eyes fixed somewhere on vacant space. But now she seemed to pull herself together, she looked once more at Rosemary, gave her an encouraging smile, and said in a perfectly quiet, matter-of-fact tone:

"Well, now tell me all about it. Philip's release and Anna's is only a temporary one. Is that it?"

Rosemary nodded. She could not trust herself to speak. Elza gave a little gasp, but her voice was still quite steady as she went on questioning Rosemary:

"What is the charge against them?"

"Philip wrote certain newspaper articles," Rosemary replied, and her voice sounded mechanical, like that of an automaton, "which have appeared in the English and American press. Anna used to send those through in the parcels she packed up in Balog's shop."

"I knew about those articles," Elza rejoined simply. "Everybody in Transylvania knew about them, but I did not guess that Philip had anything to do with them, or Anna. Then," she went on with a little catch in her throat, "it means a charge of treason against the State?"

"Yes!"

"Military tribunal?"

"Yes."

"And-if they are found guilty-a-sentence-of death?"

"No! No! No!" And Rosemary was on her knees with her arms round Elza's shoulders, her tear-stained face turned up to her, protesting vigorously, strenuously, that which she knew was false. But Elza's big, round eyes were tearless; she looked a little wildly perhaps, but quite kindly into the beautiful face that expressed such a world of love and sympathy. Then, gently but firmly, she disengaged herself from Rosemary's arms.

"Well now, my dear," she asked, very quietly, "all this being so, why did Naniescu let those children come home at all? Why should he postpone their trial, their-their punishment?"

Rosemary's head fell upon her breast.

I don't know," she murmured.

But Elza put her podgy finger under Rosemary's chin, and forced her to look up.

"Don't lie to me, darling," she pleaded softly; "tell me the truth."

"I have told you the truth, Elza," Rosemary protested through her tears.

"Then I must believe you, if you say so. And yet it is all very mysterious. Why should Naniescu wait? Why should he play with those poor children, like a cat does with a mouse? You know, Rosemary darling, what they gipsy said in the end?"

Rosemary shook her head.

"He said that the stranger within the gates had the power to save my son from death. Have you that power, Rosemary?"

"No! No!" Rosemary protested wildly. "If it were in my power, don't you think that I would do anything in the world to save Philip and Anna?"

Elza nodded.

"Yes, dear," she said gently. "Of course I do think it; but when the gipsy said that, I could not help feeling hopeful, for he was right in everything else he said—"

Then suddenly she took Rosemary's face between her two hands, and she gazed into her eyes with a look of almost fierce intensity in her own, as if she would wrest a secret from the depths of the younger woman's soul.

"Swear to me, Rosemary," she said, and her gentle voice sounded raucous and harsh, "swear to me that there is nothing in the world that you can do to save Philip!"

And Rosemary, returning her gaze, replied steadily:

"I swear to you that it is not in my power to save Philip and Anna. If it were, I would do it."

Even then Elza did not cry. She just sat there quite, quite still, her big, round eyes quite dry, her mouth without a quiver, but sitting there so still, so still with her beautiful golden hair all round her face, the soft streaks of grey all about her temples, her fine features rigid, her podgy white hands resting on her knees; she looked such a tragic figure of despair that Rosemary could hardly suppress the cry of anguish that rose insistently to her throat.

"And so we can do nothing," Elza said, with a note of quiet finality in her voice.

"Don't say that, dear," Rosemary protested. "Jasper, as a matter of fact, has gone to Bucharest to try and see the King personally. The Roumanian Government owes some gratitude to my husband, as you know. I am quite sure that he will bring strong pressure to bear upon the authorities, and get a full pardon for Philip and Anna on the score of their youth."

But Elza slowly shook her head.

"You don't believe yourself, darling," she said, "in what you say. The children have committed the unpardonable crime of being born Hungarians, and of resenting foreign tyranny in their native land. The King himself would be kind, I am sure, but Bucharest is a long way off, and the bureaucrats over here do not know the meaning of the word 'mercy'."

"But we know the meaning of the word 'hope,' Elza dear," Rosemary said steadily, and struggled to her feet. "We are not going to give up hope. You talk about your gipsies having the gift of prophecy. Well, it is my turn to prophesy now. Philip and Anna are in God's hands, and you and I are going to pray so hard and so ceaselessly that God will help us, I am sure. I know," she added firmly.

Elza gave a short, quick sigh.

"Oh, yes," she said, "you are lucky, you English! Your religion means a great deal to you. But we, over here, are so different. We go to convent schools when we are too young to understand. Then we are all fire and enthusiasm, but we do not understand. After that we marry and live in those remote villages where the poor curé is only an illiterate peasant with whom we have nothing in common, whose habits are often such that we could not possibly make our confession to him. And so we soon forget what we learned in our childhood, and we come to trusting in ourselves rather than in God."

She rose and, with the same motherly gentleness which she always showed to Rosemary, she folded the girl in her loving arms.

"Good night, my dear," she said placidly. "I ought not to have kept you up so late. Good night, dear. Pray to your God for us all. The God of the English is more merciful, I think, than ours."

"Elza," Rosemary insisted, "promise me that you will not give up hope. Jasper comes back to-morrow. He may bring the best of news. Promise me that in any case you will not give up hope."

The ghost of a smile appeared on Elza's face.

"I will promise," she said, "not altogether to give up faith."

Rosemary kissed her tenderly. After that she escorted her as far as her room, and at the door she kissed her once more, and then she said, with solemn earnestness:

"Elza darling, will you believe me if I say that if I could give my life for those two children I would do it? If it were in my power to save them, I would. But it is not in my power to save them, to do anything, but to leave them in God's hands."

Elza returned her kiss with gentleness and affection.

"Dear, kind Rosemary," she murmured; "go to bed, dear, you must be so tired."

Then she quietly slipped into her room and closed the door. And Rosemary was left to face the night alone.

CHAPTER XIX

What puzzled Rosemary was the gipsy.

What was the mystery of that vagabond found lurking in the park at nightfall with a revolver in his belt? What connexion had he with the eyes that had watched Rosemary the night that she was talking with little Anna? And how had he come in possession of the inner history of Philip's and Anna's temporary release?

There was a mystery here. Somewhere. A disquieting, a terrifying mystery, not altogether to be accounted for by the spy system or other secret organization of the Roumanian Government.

All night Rosemary struggled with the puzzle. All night she wrestled with herself for the right to break her promise to Jasper and to lay all the facts of this case before Peter. She wanted to do this before Jasper's return, and, anyway, he must release her-he must-from that promise which placed her in a false and disloyal position towards Peter. When Rosemary fell asleep the dawn was breaking, and she had almost made up her mind to tell Peter everything.

But the next morning when she went downstairs she found the whole house in a turmoil. Servants rushing to and fro, Elza in close conversation with the chef, Maurus shouting contradictory orders across the galleried hall. Peter was in the drawing-room playing a jazz tune this time, and Philip and Anna were fox-trotting, infusing even into this ugly so-called dance some of their own native grace.

As soon as Rosemary appeared she was greeted with regular war-whoops of delight. In a moment she was drawn into the whirlpool of excitement. Philip and Anna dragged her to the sofa, and they and Maurus and Elza all talked to her at once, while Peter, with the inevitable cigarette in the corner of his mouth, continued to pound away at the jazz tune.

From the deafening hubbub of conversation Rosemary gathered, in the first instance, that the gipsy band from Bonczhida were coming over the next day, and the gipsies of Bonczhida were the finest in Transylvania. Then that the Keletys were driving over from Hajdu, and the Fejérs from Henger; that perhaps Aunt Charlotte would come too and bring Marie; that the Keletys were bringing the Poltys, and the Fejérs having the Kékesy boys staying with them would of course bring them along. They reckoned that there would be ten or a dozen couples to dance, and with the mammas and papas they would be thirty to supper. They expected most of the guests to arrive in time for luncheon, and in the afternoon they could have some tennis; then in the evening they would have a ball to which the officers from the garrison at Cluj had already been invited, and they had accepted by telephone. Among them were those who were going to play cricket with the Hungarians at Hódmezö under Peter's direction.

At this marvellous statement Peter came to a pause in the music with a crashing chord, took the cigarette out of his mouth, and throwing up his hands, exclaimed:

"Going to play cricket with the Hungarians under Peter's direction! Oh, blessed People! Ye ghosts of Fitzgerald, Pycroft, and of Lillywhite, do ye hear them and writhe up there in Heaven?"

Then he struck up the "March of the Men of Harlech."

"If anyone says anything more about cricket," he said solemnly, "I shall force them to play with warped bats and golf-balls on a ploughed field."

Not a trace of anxiety or even preoccupation on any of those dear, beaming faces. Elza was as excited as any of them, worried to death because the carp they had got out of the lake for this evening's supper were not really fat.

"They're no bigger than a good-sized goldfish," she said to Rosemary with a note of real tragedy in her voice, and her blue eyes at once looked anxious and troubled, as if the matter of the carp was the only thing that could worry her.

Rosemary made a great effort not to be a wet blanket in the midst of all this gaiety. In this she succeeded admirably. All she had to do was to smile and to nod her head, and now and then to cry out, "How splendid!" The others did all the talking, and when conversation subsided for a moment Peter came down with a fresh, crashing jazz tune.

Rosemary would have thought the whole scene a phantasmagoria-illusive images that would presently be dispelled-only that she had known these people ever since she was a child. She had studied their curious psychology, half barbaric, with all the primitive disregard of danger and the passion for pleasure, even at the point of death. She gave ungrudging admiration to Elza-Elza who had sat in her room last night, rigid, dry-eyed, a living statue of despair. What went on behind that smooth, white brow of hers? What projects? What hopes? And little Anna? Anna knew. Anna guessed. She had spoken of her fears to Rosemary. Spoken of eyes that watched her, of eyes that were willing her to do something foolish that would compromise her irretrievably this time. Elza and Anna! What an example of self-possession, of self-control! Rosemary was almost ready to persuade herself that something had happened to reassure them both-that, in fact, they knew the danger to be past.

Only that Elza avoided her glance, and that the dear soul, usually so placid, so stable, was just a thought more restless than usual, and her gentle voice would from time to time become shrill.

At last, genuinely tired and bewildered by so much noise, Rosemary jumped up and, laughing, declared that she must escape out of the bear-garden for a moment and get a breath of fresh air in the park. In order to reach the glass door that gave on the veranda, Rosemary had to go past the piano. Quite close. Peter looked up when she was near him, and she said to him as she went past: "They are very gay, aren't they?"

"Elza has a perfectly mad plan in her head," Peter replied, and struck a few loud chords so that no one save Rosemary should hear what he said. "For God's sake, if you have any influence over her, get her to give it up."

Then he shouted merrily: "I've had enough of those horrible American tunes. Who wants a csàrdàs?"

But he did not play a csàrdàs. For a moment or two his fingers wandered aimlessly over the keys, whilst his eyes followed Rosemary as she stepped through the glass door on to the sun-bathed veranda. And as Rosemary felt the sun, the clear, luscious air, the scent of flowers and of distant pines, envelop her as in a warm mantle, there came wafted to her ears the soft strains of that exquisite Hungarian love-song: "There is but one beautiful girl in all the world." The piano now seemed to sing under Peter's delicate touch and Rosemary paused and stood quite, quite still, letting the music sink into her, yielding to its voluptuous cadence, and allowing her thoughts, her desires, her longings, to soar upwards to that infinity to which music alone can convey the soul on its magic wings.

CHAPTER XX

Rosemary had wandered beyond the confines of the park, and roamed about in the woods, having lost all sense of time. When presently she came back to the reality of things she looked at her watch and saw that it was close on twelve o'clock. Luncheon at the chateau was at half-past. It meant stepping out briskly so as to be in time.

As soon as she reached the flower-garden, it struck her as strange that the château suddenly appeared to be so quiet. No sound reached her as she came near to the veranda steps, either of shrill, excited voices, or of laughter or song.

She found the family assembled on the veranda-Maurus, Elza, Philip and Anna. Only Peter was not there. A first glance at them all revealed to Rosemary what had occurred. Elza had told them what the gipsy had said. Maurus sat in his chair like a man in a trance, his dark face flushed, his hair towzled, his large, dark eyes staring out before him, with a look in them that was not entirely sane.

Philip, on the other hand, was pacing up and down the veranda floor, whilst Anna stood quite still, leaning against a column, looking for all the world like a little martyr tied to the stake, her small, thin hands clasped together, a faint flush on her cheeks. These two children looked excited rather than horror-filled. Anna's face suggested that of an idealist-not altogether resigned, but nevertheless eager to suffer for the cause. But Philip looked like a fighter, seeking for a chance to hit back, a combatant not yet brought to his knees.

Elza's round, blue eyes just wandered from one to the other of these faces all dear to her.

They were dry eyes, anxious eyes, but there was nothing in them to-day of that tragic despair which had been so heart-breaking to behold the evening before.

Rosemary's first thought had been: "They know. Elza has told them!" The second was "Elza has a plan. Peter said it was a mad one. A plan for Philip and Anna's escape." She wondered if they would tell her.

"I hope I am not late for lunch," she said, rather breathlessly, as she had been walking very fast. Then she added casually: "Where is Peter?"

"He is busy packing," Elza replied.

"Packing?" Rosemary exclaimed, puzzled. "He is not going away ­already?"

"Yes," Elza said, "to-night."

"But he did not say anything yesterday," Rosemary insisted, "about going away again so soon. Or even this morning."

"I don't think he knew yesterday," Elza rejoined. "It seems he had a telephone message half an hour ago. He says he must go."

Anna now appeared to wake out of her trance. Rosemary was standing close to her just then; she took Rosemary's hand gently in hers and said:

"You see, darling, it is like this: one of Peter's cricketers has telephoned to him to say that they have such a lot of trouble about their rooms at Hódmezö. Roumanians are not exactly popular in Hungary," she went on with a wan little smile, "and I suppose that hotel-keepers don't care to put them up. So Peter had to promise to go and put things right for his cricketers."

"He will come back, of course, after the cricket match," Elza concluded placidly. "But it is a great nuisance for him, packing and unpacking all the time."

Rosemary made no further remark. Everything seemed terribly puzzling. That Elza had told the children, had told Maurus, all she knew, was beyond the question. That Peter also knew everything, and that he knew and disapproved of some plan which Elza had made, Rosemary supposed, for the escape of Philip and Anna was, to her mind, equally certain. But even if Peter disapproved, how could he go away at this critical time, and leave Elza to plan and contrive alone, hampered by a half-crazy husband, and surrounded by spies? However, no one apparently meant to say anything more just then, and it was quite a relief when the luncheon-bell sounded and the little party on the veranda broke up and everyone trooped downstairs for luncheon.

Peter was already in the dining-room, waiting for the others. Elza in her kind, gentle way asked him about his packing, and whether she could help him to get ready. But Peter declared that he wanted nothing, only the carriage this evening to take him to Cluj.

He grumbled terribly at having to go away. He hated the idea of missing the ball and all the friends who were coming; but when Elza or Maurus tried to persuade him to stay, he was very firm. "I've got to go, Aunt Elza. You don't know what complications might occur if those Roumanians got to Hódmezö and were not properly treated. Good God!" he added, with mock horror, "it might land you all in another war! And all through my fault!"

Rosemary had never seen Peter so gay or conversational. He appeared entirely unconscious of the undercurrent of tragedy that flowed through Elza's pathetic attempts at conversation, and Maurus's equally tragic silences. He talked incessantly, chiefly about the cricket match and chiefly to Philip, who made desperate efforts to appear interested. Rosemary did her best, too, but she was anxious and puzzled, and frankly she did not believe in the story of the telephone message.

She tried now and then to catch Elza's eye, but in this she never once succeeded. Elza was avoiding her glance. She meant to say nothing about her plan-this mad plan of which Peter disapproved so thoroughly that he preferred to be out of the way. Did these dear, kind people mistrust her then, because of what the gipsy had said? Or was this reticence merely the natural outcome of a sense of supreme danger that mistrusted everything and everybody?

Rosemary felt the mystery deepening around her. She could not understand Peter.

Sometime after luncheon she found Elza and Anna sitting together in the small brick-built summer-house at the farther end of the lake. Rosemary had wandered as far as there with a book, anxious as she was to be out of the way. It was hot, and the air was very still, and the scent of tuberoses and heliotrope was almost too heady. In the perennial border a number of humming-bird moths were busy about a bed of sweet sultan; the soft whirring sound of their wings could be heard quite distinctly in the extreme stillness of this late summer's afternoon. From time to time distant sounds of village life came in quick, short waves to Rosemary's ear, as well as the sharp click of tools wielded by the gardeners at work somewhere in the park. Close beside the summer-house one man was busy hand-weeding the path. As Rosemary drew nearer, he looked up for an instant, and then he shuffled rapidly away. In the long, stooping figure, the dirty rags and the dark skin, Rosemary thought that she recognized the gipsy of the previous night. It was just like Elza, she thought, to give the poor wretch work on the estate.

When Rosemary saw Elza and Anna sitting together in the summer-house, her instinct was to pass discreetly on, with just a hasty, cheery word, but Elza called to her.

"Come and sit here a minute, Rosemary darling," she said. "Anna and I want to tell you everything."

Everything! Rosemary without a word stepped into the little pavilion. Anna pulled a wicker chair forward between herself and Elza, and Rosemary sat down, a little anxious, a little fearful, wondering what these dear, enthusiastic hotheads had devised, and how she herself would act when she knew. Elza at once took hold of her hand and fondled it.

"You asked me last night, darling," she began, "not to give up hope, didn't you?"

Rosemary nodded acquiescence.

"And I promised that I would not give up faith," Elza went on quietly. "Well, I have kept my faith all through last night, which was very trying. With the dawn, hope came to me, and after that I once more felt in charity with all the world."

Rosemary gave Elza's podgy white hand a tender squeeze. "Dear!" she whispered.

"We have a plan, darling," Elza said triumphantly. "A splendid plan! To-morrow night Philip and Anna will be in Hungary, safely out of the way."

Rosemary had known all along what was coming. She looked at Anna, who gave an excited little nod.

"Tell Rosemary, Aunt Elza," she said. "All from the beginning. There's no one in the world you can trust as you can Rosemary."

"Listen then, darling," Elza said, speaking quite quietly at first, then allowing excitement to get hold of her voice, making it tremble while she spoke, and husky with eagerness, while her command of the English tongue became less and less pronounced.

"It has all been made possible by this cricket business, for which I thank God and Peter Blakeney. As I told you this morning, Peter's cricket people are all coming here to-morrow for the ball. They have to be at Hódmezö the following day for the cricket. So they will bring their luggage, and make a start from here after the ball-I suppose about midnight-in three motor-cars which the Governor, General Naniescu, has himself placed at their disposition. Hódmezö is, as you know, in Hungary, just the other side of the frontier. It will be about four or five hour's drive from here, as there is a short cut-quite a good road-which avoids Cluj. In two of those motor-cars the cricket people themselves will go; they are mostly young Roumanian officers and men of the better class. General Naniescu has, of course, given them all free passes for the occasion. Fortunately he has also given them passes for four servants to accompany them. These four men will go in the third motor, and they will also go in the motor all the way to Hódmezö. Now two of these servants, whom the local commissary of police has himself chosen and to whom passes have been given, are the two sons of János the miller, who is devoted to us all. His two sons have certainly served in the Roumanian army because they were obliged, but they have remained Hungarian at heart and would do anything for me and for Philip."

Elza paused. Her eager, round eyes searched Rosemary's face. Rosemary, of course, had already guessed the rest, her own excitement while she listened was as tense as Elza's. She gripped the white podgy little hand of her friend, and looked from her to Anna-a mute question in every glance.

"You can guess, of course?" Anna said.

Rosemary nodded: "I can guess," she said, "but do go on."

"I sent for János early this morning," Elza went on. "All I had to tell him was that Philip and Anna were in great danger, and must be got out of the country at any cost. He understood! We Hungarians in this occupied territory all understand one another. We understand danger. We live with danger constantly at our door. And János was so clever, so helpful. I only had to outline my plan, he thought out all the details. The mill is about a kilometre from here, the last house in the village; as soon as the first two motors have gone with the cricket people and the Roumanian officers, Philip and Anna will at once run round to the mill, and János will give them clothes belonging to his sons. The clothes they will put on. In the meanwhile the third motor-car will have collected the two other men in the village who are going as servants to Hódmezö-one is the brother of the Jew over at the inn, and the other the son of the Roumanian storekeeper. Then it will call at the mill. János will ask the two men to come in. He and his two sons will give them some strong spirit to drink. The brother of the Jew and the son of the storekeeper are both of them great drunkards. When they have become what you English call, I think, blotto, János will take them back into the motor. There they will sit; and will probably at once go to sleep. But Philip and Anna will also get into the motor. They will be dressed in peasant's clothes, and they will have the free passes which Naniescu has given to János' sons. They will get to Hódmezö about five o'clock in the morning. And once they are in Hungary they are safe. Rosemary darling! they are safe!"

Rosemary had remained silent. The whole thing certainly at first glance appeared so easy, so simple that she found herself wondering why she or Jasper-or Peter-had never thought of such a plan. She also wondered why Peter should have spoken of it as a mad plan, and begged her if she had any influence with Elza to dissuade her from it. What had been in his mind when he said that? Of what was he afraid? Spies, of course. But spies, like the poor, were always there, and, after all, Philip and Anna would only be risking what already was forfeit-their lives.

Rosemary sat there in silence, her fingers closed over Elza's soft, warm hand. She gazed straight before her, thinking. Thinking; her mind already following Philip and Anna's flight through this hostile, cruel country, to the land which would mean freedom and life for them. She saw them in her mind's eye, like a vision floating before her across the lake, which in this daydream had become a wide, dusty road with a motor-car speeding along toward life and toward freedom.

It seemed a solution. It must be a solution. Thank God Jasper would be there to help with counsel and with suggestions. Elza was talking again now. In her quaint English, which became more and more involved, she continued to talk of her plan, as a child will talk of some event that made it happy. She harped on the details, on János' devotion, the two sons who would make their way to the frontier in their father's bullock cart, and then cross over to Hungary on foot, through the woods and over a mountain pass where there would be no fear of meeting Roumanian sentinels. At Hódmezö they would find Peter and the cricket people. They would get back their passes, and return quite gaily with the others, having saved the lives of Philip and Anna. Such devotion! Wasn't it splendid?

Rosemary only nodded from time to time, and from time to time she squeezed Elza's hand. It was so hot and so airless here in the little pavilion with those clusters of climbing heliotrope all over the roof and half-blocking up the entrance. The bees and humming bird moths were making such a buzzing and a whirring; it was just like the hum of motor-car wheels on the dusty road. And through it all came the swishing sound of a garden broom upon the gravel path, between the summer-house and the stone coping around the ornamental lake. Rosemary caught herself watching the broom swinging backwards and forwards across the path, and across; she saw the two hands-very dark lean hands they were-that wielded the broom, and finally the gipsy's tall, thin figure bent almost double to his task. It seemed just right that the man should be there at this hour, sweeping the path for Elza to walk on presently, for Philip also and for Anna. It was right because it was the gipsy who had told Elza what she, Rosemary, had not had the courage to say. There was very little mystery about the gipsy now; he was just a ragged, dirty labourer, bending to his task. Did the strange intuition-or was it divination-that had brought him all the way from his native village to speak with Elza whisper to him that his warning had already borne fruit, and that the gracious lady whom he had come to warn had found in faith and hope the way out of dark destiny?

"Oh, that's all right, darling! We spoke English all the time!"

Elza said this with a light laugh. Rosemary woke from her day-dream. She must have been speaking in her dream-about the gipsy who haunted her thoughts.

"Did I say anything?" she asked.

"Yes, darling," Anna replied, "you have been very silent for the last minute or two, and then suddenly you said: 'The gipsy, the gipsy,' twice, like that. It sounded so funny."

"I thought," Elza put in, "that perhaps you were afraid that the dirty old gipsy had heard what we said. But gipsies in Hungary don't speak English, you know. For one thing they never go to school."

Elza appeared quite light-hearted now.

"I knew," she said, "that you would approve of my plan."

She said this, but Rosemary herself was quite unconscious that she had spoken. She had dreamed and dreamed, and seen a motor-car speeding along the dusty road. But through it all, she had approved, approved of the plan. It was so feasible, and so simple. She only wondered why Peter disapproved.

"What does Peter Blakeney say to all that?" she asked presently.

"Peter?"

Elza asked wide-eyed.

"Yes. You told him about your plan, didn't you?"

"No! No!" Elza asserted firmly. "We have told no one but you. Peter is going away. Why should we tell Peter?"

"I thought—" Rosemary murmured.

"It will be time enough to tell him," Anna put in gaily, "when Philip and I turn up at the hotel at Hódmezö. Won't he be surprised when he sees us?"

How strange it all was! Peter knew, since he spoke of a mad plan in Elza's head, and begged Rosemary to dissuade her from it. Peter knew, though no one had told him. Another mystery added to all those which had of late filled Rosemary with such a torturing sense of foreboding. Another mystery that seemed to surround Peter's changed personality, that seemed a part of this new personality of his, flippant and indifferent, so unlike the Peter she had known.

Now she longed passionately for Jasper-dear, kind Jasper, around whom there hung no mystery-the strong hand that would guide her through this maze of intrigue which bewildered as much as it terrified her. Fortunately her promise to Jasper had been kept. With this new mystery about Peter that she vaguely dreaded, she would have been racked with anxiety if she had confided in him. And yet, how disloyal was this thought, this fear! Fear of Peter! Mistrust of Peter! A very little while ago she would have staked her soul that Peter was true, loyal, the soul of honour, an English gentleman, an English sportsman! A Blakeney! A Scarlet Pimpernel of to-day! What was there in the atmosphere of this unfortunate country groaning under a foreign, hated yoke to taint his simple soul with the foul breath of intrigue?

CHAPTER XXI

Walking across the lawn toward the château half an hour later, Rosemary found herself once more laughing at her suspicions of Peter. Peter!! Heavens above! what turn were her suspicions taking?

Did she really believe for one moment that Peter was intriguing with these crafty Roumanians for the undoing or the persecution of his own kith and kin? The very thought was preposterous. The suggestion untenable. Whatever Jasper might think, whatever he might fear, she, Rosemary, was nothing but a traitor if she allowed herself for one moment to harbour such thoughts of Peter.

He was changed, certainly he was changed. But between that and Jasper's suspicions—! It was Jasper who had first put thoughts into Rosemary's head by extracting that strange promise from her. Not to talk to Peter. Not to discuss the situation with Peter. Otherwise she would never for one moment—

Of course, of course, the thought was preposterous. Peter and intrigue! Peter and crafty Machiavellism! Peter and a double game he was ashamed to avow! Why, reason should have rejected the first hint of such a possibility, even if loyalty did not.

"Hallo, Rosemary!"

Peter's voice brought Rosemary back to reality. She had wandered up the veranda steps, hardly conscious of where she was. Thank Heaven, after her musings she was able to look Peter loyally in the face. He had his hands buried as usual in the pockets of his trousers, and the inevitable cigarette between his lips. Rosemary felt hot and tired; the sun had been baking the lawn while she walked across it, and she had no parasol. With a contented little sigh she sank into the basket chair that Peter pulled forward for her.

"I suppose," he said abruptly, "that they have been telling you about the nonsense that's going on in their dear, silly heads."

And with a nod he indicated the summer-house where, against the creeper-clad entrance, Elza's white dress gleamed in the sunshine. Rosemary made no reply. Peter's words had somehow acted like a douche of cold water upon her sense of rest and well-being. It was true then! He did know. Though Elza and Anna had told him nothing, he knew. How? Rosemary would have given worlds for the right to ask him, but suddenly her promise to Jasper loomed before her with paramount importance, and put a seal upon her lips.

"Won't you tell me?" Peter insisted.

Of course there was a simple explanation for the whole thing. Those dear people, Elza, Maurus, even Anna, were not models of discretion. Their voices were loud and penetrating, and, when they were excited about any project or event, they would discuss it here, there and everywhere at the top of their voices, and with a total disregard of possible eavesdroppers. Peter's knowledge of Elza's plans may have come about quite innocently. Rosemary was quite sure it had come about innocently. But somehow she longed for that perfect security and trust in Peter which she used to feel even when he was most capricious and his love-making most tempestuous. Why hadn't he told Elza that he knew? Why, instead of discussing the plan over with Elza or one of the others, did he feign ignorance with them, and suddenly elect to go away on an obviously futile excuse?

Oh, how Rosemary hated all this mystery! And how she feared it! And how, above all, she hated that promise which she had made to Jasper, and which prevented her at this moment from having a straight talk with Peter.

"So you won't tell me?" he reiterated, and his voice sounded curiously harsh, quite different to his usual very pleasant, musical tones. Peter had the voice of a musician. It was deep in tone and beautifully modulated. Peter's voice had been one of the things about him that had captivated Rosemary's fancy in the past. Now, he spoke through his teeth, with that hateful cigarette in the long holder held between the corners of his lips. Rosemary tried to be flippant.

"Dear me!" she exclaimed, with a little broken laugh, "are you trying to play the role of the heavy father, Peter, or of the silent strong man? And now you are frowning just like the hero in one of Ethel M. Dell's books. When are you going to seize me by the wrist and whack me with a slipper?"

It was very easy to make Peter laugh. He was laughing now, and the scowl fled for the moment from his face.

"Don't play the fool, Rosemary," he said in his slangy, boyish way. "Tell me what Aunt Elza has been saying to you out here?"

"But you silly boy," she riposted, "There's nothing to tell."

Back came the scowl on Peter's face, darker than before.

"So," he said curtly, "I suppose that you and Aunt Elza and Anna have been discussing frocks for the past hour and a half."

"No, dear," she replied coolly, "only the arrangements for to-morrow's ball."

Whereupon Peter said "Damn!" and swung round on his heel, as if he meant to leave her there without another word. But for this move of his Rosemary was unprepared. She did not want Peter to go. Not just yet. She was perfectly loyal to him in her thoughts, and she was irrevocably determined not to break her promise to Jasper, but she was not going to let Peter go off to-day without some sort of explanation. She might not see him again after this-for weeks, for months, for years! So she called him back.

"Peter!" she cried.

He swung back and returned to her side. His deep, changeful eyes, which at times were the colour of the ocean on the Cornish coast, and at others recalled the dark tints of his Hungarian ancestors, looked strangely resentful still. But as his glance rested on Rosemary, wandered from her delicate face in the pearly shadow of her garden hat, along the contour of her graceful shoes, the resentful look fled. And Rosemary, glancing up, caught a momentary flash of that soul-holding gaze which had taken her captive that lovely night in June by the river, when she had lain crushed and bruised in his arms, the gaze which that other night in the Albert Hall box had filled her soul with abiding regret.

"What do you want me to tell you, Peter?" she asked in that stupid way that comes to the lips when the soul is stirred and the mind commands self-control.

"Nothing," he replied roughly, "that you don't want to."

"Peter," she retorted, "why are you so strange with me? One would think I had done something to offend you. You scarcely will speak to me; when you do you are so rough and so abrupt, as if-as if— Oh, I don't know," she went on rapidly, and her voice shook a little as she tried to avoid that memory conjuring glance of his. "It seems as if something had come between us, almost as if we were enemies."

Peter laughed at this, but his laugh sounded rather forced and harsh.

"Enemies!" he exclaimed. "Good God, no!"

"But something has happened, Peter," she insisted. "I cannot tell you how I find you changed."

"Well," he said curtly, "something did happen, you know, when you married Jasper."

"I don't mean that, Peter. I saw you in London after I was engaged, and you had not changed then. It is here-in this place-that you seem so different."

"You must admit the place gets on one's nerves," he said with a shrug.

"You must make allowances, Peter," she rejoined gently. "They are in such trouble."

"Are they?" he retorted.

"Why, you know they are!" And her voice rang with a note of indignant reproach. "How can you ask?"

"I ask because I don't know. You say that they-I suppose you mean Aunt Elza and Maurus and the kids-are in trouble. How should I know what you mean? Since I've been here they have done nothing but shout, dance and make plans for more dancing and shouting, and when I ask you anything you only tell me lies."

"Peter!"

"I beg your pardon, dear," he said with sudden gentleness. "I didn't mean to be caddish. But you know," he went on, harshly once more, "you did tell me that Jasper had gone to Budapest on business."

"Well?" she queried.

"Well! Knowing you to be truthful by nature, I am wondering why you should have told me such an unnecessary lie." Then, as Rosemary was silent, he insisted: "Won't you tell me, Rosemary?"

"You are talking nonsense, Peter," she replied obstinately. "There is nothing to tell."

"Which means that Jasper has told you-or insinuated-that I am not to be trusted."

She protested: "Certainly not!"

"Then," he concluded, "the mistrust comes out of your own heart."

"That again is nonsense, Peter. There is no question of trust or mistrust, and I have no idea what you mean. It is you who try to deceive me by feigning ignorance of what is going on in this house. If Aunt Elza has not spoken openly with you, it certainly is not for me to enlighten you. There," she added, as she caught a look of eager questioning in his eyes, "I have already said more than I have any right to say. Elza and Anna are coming across the lawn. If you want to know anything more, you had better ask them."

And abruptly she rose and left him and went into the house. She felt hurt and angry and not a little ashamed. She felt hurt with Peter, angry with Jasper, and ashamed of herself. Peter was quite right. She had told him lies-unnecessary lies. And Jasper had forced her to tell them and to be disloyal to Peter. The present situation was a false one. Utterly false. It was Peter who should take over the direction of Elza's plan. With his help the chances of Philip's and Anna's escape would be increased tenfold. It seemed an awful thing-it was an awful thing-that he should be shut out of Elza's councils, that he should go away on a futile and trivial errand while those his own kith and kin were in such terrible danger, and running into dangers that were worse still.

For the last time the temptation returned, and with double violence, to break her promise to Jasper and go straight back to Peter and tell him everything. She paused in the centre of the drawing-room and looked back through the wide-open glass doors. Peter was still on the veranda. He had picked up a stick and a tennis ball and was hitting the one with the other and humming a tune. He caught Rosemary's eye as she glanced back to look at him.

"Hallo!" he called gaily.

Rosemary went deliberately back to the glass door. She paused under the lintel; then she said earnestly:

"Don't go to Hódmezö to-day, Peter. I am sure there is no necessity for you to go. You can book rooms by telephone, and, anyway—" She paused a moment and then went on more earnestly still: "Wait another twenty-four hours, Peter. Don't go till-till after the ball."

Peter did not look at her. He was taking careful aim with the stick and the tennis ball. He made a swinging hit and watched the ball fly away over the lawn. Then he threw the stick down and turned to Rosemary.

"Sorry," he said lightly, "but I have promised."

She gave an impatient sigh, and after another second's hesitation once more turned to go.

"I say," he called after her, "what about a game of tennis. There's just time for a set before I need make a start."

But by now all temptation to talk openly with Peter had vanished. What would be the use of telling this irresponsible boy anything? Jasper was right. Elza was right. Only she, Rosemary, was foolish, and her vaunted knowledge of human nature nothing but vanity. She had only sufficient self-control left to call back lightly to him:

"No, thank you, Peter, I am rather tired."

Then she fled precipitately out of the room.

CHAPTER XXII

Rosemary did not see Peter again before he left. Somehow that last vision which she had of him, hitting at a rubber ball with a stick, and his utterly callous suggestion of a game of tennis at an hour which he must have known was fateful to all his kindred, had caused a revulsion in Rosemary's heart. She felt that never again would she feel tempted to break her word to Jasper. Indeed, she felt how right Jasper had been all along in insisting that she should not discuss the grave events that affected the lives of all the inmates of Kis-Imre with such a callous, empty-headed, irresponsible young jackanapes as Peter had lately become.

So she had gone upstairs to her room, and with a curious heartache, for which she was unable to account, she listened to the familiar bustle and noise that always filled the château whenever visitors came or went. Somehow she could not bring herself to say "Good-bye" to Peter. Elza had told her that he would be coming back within the next week or so, but Rosemary, who felt too tired for introspection, could not have told you whether she was glad or sorry at the prospect of seeing him again quite so soon.

The rest of the day, as well as the long, interminable evening, were taken up with the discussion of household affairs-the luncheon, the dinner, the ball, and even into these Philip and Anna entered whole-heartedly and with apparent complete disregard of what that fateful morrow might bring them. As for Elza, she was perfectly marvellous! Kind, fussy as usual, her menus and the airing of the guest-rooms being, to all appearances, the most important matters in her mind.

After everyone had gone to bed little Anna came to Rosemary's room and sat for a while beside her on the sofa, holding the Englishwoman's hand as if she wished to transfuse through those slender fingers strength and courage into her soul. When Rosemary made a passing allusion to the wonderful stoicism that could allow trivial matters to seem so important at a moment when life and worse were at stake, Anna explained quite gently:

"We are made like that, we Hungarians. We hold our lives cheap, I think, because throughout our history we have always had to sacrifice them for our country. And also, I think, that we have a certain Oriental fatalism in us. Not the fatalism of the Moslem, who abdicates free will, but the faith of the Christian who believes that God ordains everything and that it is useless to fight his decrees."

"And yet you are not a religious people," Rosemary riposted, thinking of what Elza had said to her the night before.

"Only in the sense that children are religious," Anna rejoined. "We accept blindly what some kind nuns and ignorant priests have taught us, and we believe in an Almighty God more absolutely and ingenuously than the more thoughtful people of the West."

Long after Anna had gone Rosemary thought over what the child had said. Well, perhaps it was true. There certainly was an exquisitely beautiful passage in the New Testament where the Divine Master enjoins his disciples to become as little children. And, recollecting Anna's words, Rosemary caught herself wondering whether the childlike faith of these people would not open the Kingdom of Heaven more easily for them than would a more considered, more rational religion-a compromise between a very erring human reason and the Divine Mysteries which no human thought could fathom.

As for the next day, it was just a whirl, a jumble of gaieties and talk, of arrivals and merry greetings, of meals and tennis and walks, and of talk, talk, talk and endless laughter. Rosemary, when she rose, had made up her mind that she would just shed her real personality for the whole of the day. She would cease to be Rosemary with the aching heart, the soul rent by conflicting duties, by anxieties, determination and sorrow; she would become the "dear Lady Tarkington," the "Rosemary darling" of all these kind, hospitable, wonderful people. She would laugh with them, play with them and with them lay aside for the next few hours the torturing anxiety of the day.

She would forget, she would laugh, she would talk. The effort would do her good, and when the hour came when the fate of all those she cared for would have to be decided, when on one word, one smile, would perhaps hang the destiny of Philip and of Anna, then she would be strong enough to play the part allotted to her in the tragic farce—the farce that had found birth in the brain of a heart-broken mother.

CHAPTER XXIII

And it had been a wonderful day. The weather was perfect. Everyone was in the highest possible spirits. The chef surpassed himself; everyone pronounced the lobster à l'Américaine perfect and the Charlotte Russe Créole quite inimitable.

All afternoon tennis balls were flying, and there was coffee, ices and iced drinks going all day on the lawn. At five o'clock the gipsy musicians from Bonczhida arrived, and after that music never ceased. Rosemary learned something of gipsy endurance that day, for this band of twelve musicians never left off playing form the moment they arrived until-until midnight, when time ceased to be and Fate began to swing her long pendulum.

But between five o'clock and midnight there was music, ceaseless music. While the guests arrived, while everyone played tennis, croquet, drank coffee, walked, flirted, dressed, dined and danced there was music-music all the time.

After dinner the young Roumanian officers from the garrison at Cluj came over in several motors. Among them were the eleven cricketers, very proud of themselves, feeling quite English and real sportsmen, delighted to have been chosen to play in the historic match. Fine-looking young men, most of them, with the unmistakable swaggering air of the conqueror about their whole attitude towards the subject race. Elza was invariably a perfect hostess; but Maurus, after a curt greeting, nursed his wrath in a corner of the ballroom, surrounded by his own friends. He had been drilled to keep his temper in check, and love for his own son, anxiety for him and knowledge of danger gave him for this one evening a certain amount of self-control. Rosemary admired him as much as she did the others, for she knew what it cost Maurus to have these alien conquerors in his house.

Anna's mother and sister had come over from Ujlak. The mother was a hard woman, obviously selfish and unsympathetic. Her own grievances, the confiscation of a great deal of her property, seemed to have smothered every soft, womanly instinct in her. Apparently she knew nothing of the danger that hung over her daughter, and Rosemary had the feeling that if she had known she would not greatly have cared. Her eyes, which were dark and set very wide apart in a flat, colourless face, only softened once, and that was when she spoke about her husband, who had died just before the war.

As for persecutions, humiliations, petty tyrannies, she dismissed them with a shrug of the shoulders. "The Roumanians are the scum of the earth," she said in her quiet, unemotional manner, through her thin, colourless lips, "just a horde of uneducated peasantry; you can't expect anything from a pig but a grunt. I am only thankful that Béla is not here to see it all."

On the other hand, the young people who filled the stately château of Kis-Imre with their flutterings like an army of gaily painted butterflies did not worry about political grievances. For them the Roumanian officers were just dancing-partners, and their worth was only measured by their proficiency in the latest steps. The mammas and papas either played bridge or sat on the chairs that were ranged against the walls all round the beautiful ballroom placidly admiring the evolutions of their own progeny.

Rosemary, not to be outdone in self-discipline, was outwardly as gay as any of them. She danced impartially with the Hungarians and the Roumanians, and talked cricket knowledgeably with the team. For her the atmosphere was electrical. At times it seemed to her over-strained senses as if she could hear the whir of the spinning-wheel driven by the Fates, the hum of the spindle, and the click of their scissors as they made ready to cut the thread of these people's destiny.

Just before midnight the young Roumanian officers who formed the cricket team left in the two motor-cars which were to take them direct to Hódmezö, a matter of ninety odd miles. Rosemary found herself saying good-bye to them like an automaton—counting them over as if they were ninepins. A kind of mist was before her eyes through which their good-looking faces seemed to be grinning at her, and their moustaches bristling like Alice's Cheshire cat.

Elza, wonderful as ever, fussed around them, stuffing delicacies into the cars at the last moment, fruit, bottles of wine, cakes, chocolates, and lending them rugs and cushions.

"It is a long drive," she said, as she shook hands one by one with the young officers, who clicked their heels together, jingled their spurs and declared that they had had a very pleasant evening. "You will be hungry when you get to Hódmezö," she added, "and all the restaurants will be closed. You will be glad of a glass of wine and some of my home-made cake."

Rosemary was standing next to Maurus Imrey at the time. She heard him mutter between his teeth:

"And may it choke you when you eat and drink."

But even Maurus was wonderful. Wonderful! He shook hands. He smiled—wryly; but he smiled. Wished them all God-speed. He had been well drilled, and he was fully conscious of the danger to Philip and Anna if he lost control over his temper now.

So he, too, gave directions for putting provisions into the cars. He had four bottles of French red wine in his cellar and he insisted that the young officers should have those. "It will make them play that silly cricket better," he said. "And I hate the stuff myself."

The four men who were going with the team as servants were there arranging the rugs, stowing the wine and fruit and cake in the cars. Rosemary knew the two sons of János, the miller, by sight. They were fine, well-set-up young fellows, obviously of the stuff that heroes are made of, for they were going to risk their lives for the children of their feudal lords.

Anna, equally self-possessed, flitted among the guests like a little fairy. She had on a pale blue dress, and out in the open her slim figure was hardly distinguishable in the gloom; only her small, white face told as if carved out of alabaster: that dear little face, with the big eyes that were so like Peter's. When she was saying good-bye to one of the young officers, who had been her dancing-partner, she said with a pout:

"I think it was horrid of you to telephone to Peter Blakeney yesterday and take him away from us. I don't believe you would have had any difficulty with the hotel people about your rooms. And, anyway, you might have let Peter have another day's enjoyment."

The young man appeared genuinely bewildered.

"Will the gracious lady deign to explain?" he asked.

"Oh, there is nothing to explain," Anna said, with a light laugh. "We were all of us very angry with you for sending that telephone message which took Peter Blakeney away from us."

"But pardon me, dear lady," the officer rejoined, "we didn't send any telephone message to Monsieur Blakeney. As a matter of fact, we fully expected to find him here."

"But about your rooms—?" Anna insisted.

"Our rooms at Hódmezö have been arranged for ages ago. Everything there is in perfect order and—"

"Anna, dear," Rosemary broke in quickly, "Peter didn't say who sent him the telephone message. He only said that he had one. It may have come from Hódmezö-from one of the hotel people-he didn't say—"

What had prompted Rosemary to interpose at this moment she did not know. It was just an instinct: the blind instinct to protect, to shield Peter from something ugly and vague, that she had not yet had time to see clearly, and Anna then went on lightly:

"Oh, of course he didn't say. Anyway, when you see Peter, tell him he was very silly to go away, and that he missed a great deal by not being here to-night. You can tell him that Marie never danced so well in all her life, and the gipsies from Bonczhida simply surpassed themselves."

Whereupon the young officer clicked his heels and promised that he would deliver the message.

"But we shan't see Monsieur Blakeney," he said, "until the evening. You know the match is not until Thursday. Monsieur Blakeney arranged to meet us in Hódmezö on Wednesday evening, and this is only Tuesday.

"It will be Wednesday morning before we start," one of his friends broke in lightly, "if you don't hurry, you old chatterbox."

After that, more "good-byes" and waving of hands as the motor-cars rounded the courtyard and finally swung out of the gates. Rosemary looked round to catch sight of Elza. She was quite placid, and on her dear, round face there was a set smile. Evidently she was unconscious of the fact that something stupendous had happened, something that had hit Rosemary like a blow from a sledge-hammer. No, no! Elza had not noticed. Elza's mind was no longer here. It was way out upon the dusty road, watching a motorcar travelling at full speed over the frontier away from this land of bondage, to Hungary to freedom. Elza had noticed nothing. Anna and Philip were still laughing and chattering, Maurus muttering curses. No one had noticed anything. Only for Rosemary had the world-her own beautiful world of truth and loyalty-come to an end. Peter had lied. Peter was playing a double game. It was no use arguing, no use hoping. The only thing to do was to go on groping in this mystery that deepened and deepened, until it became tangible, material like a thick, dark fog through which glided ghouls and demons who whispered and laughed. And they whispered and laughed because Peter had lied and because she, Rosemary, saw all her hopes, her faith, her ideals lying shattered in a tangled heap at her feet. Peter had lied. He had acted a lie. He told her that he had promised to go to Hódmezö to see about rooms for the cricket team. Well, that was not true. Rosemary had interposed, made some excuse for Peter. She wouldn't have those Roumanians think that Peter was a liar. They would have smiled, suggested some amorous intrigue which Monsieur Blakeney wished to keep dark. At the thought Rosemary's gorge rose, and she put in a lame defence for Peter. But all the time she knew that he had lied. If Peter did not go to Hódmezö yesterday, where was he now? Why all this secrecy? These lies?

Why? Oh, God, why?

Rosemary had found a quiet corner in the hall where she could sit and think for a moment. Yet thinking was the one thing she could not do. Always, at every turn she was confronted with that hideous query: Why had Peter lied? After a while she had to five up trying to think. Fate's spindle was whirring, the scissors clinking. She, Rosemary, a mere atom in the hands of Fate, must continue to play her part.

A quarter of an hour must have gone by while she sat-trying to think-in the dark. Perhaps more. Anyway, when she returned to the ballroom she found the company much diminished in numbers. All the Roumanian officers had gone, also one large party who lived just the other side of Cluj. Only a few remained whose châteaux were too far away for a midnight start, seeing that motors were forbidden to the conquered race. They were going to spend the night at Kis-Imre, and probably make a start in the morning. The young people had already resumed dancing; the gipsies were playing the latest fox-trot. The mammas and papas were placidly admiring their respective progeny.

All this Rosemary took in at a glance.

Then she looked round for Elza. But neither Elza nor Maurus was there. And Philip and Anna had also gone.

CHAPTER XXIV

A few minutes later Elza came back. To Rosemary, who had been watching for her by the door, she just whispered as she entered:

"It is all right. They have gone."

She still was wonderful. Quite calm and with that set smile on her face. Only her round, blue eyes had an unusual glitter, and the pretty silvered hair clung matted against the smooth white brow. Rosemary watched the scene, now entranced. She had never seen anything like it. It did not seem reality at all. It could not be. All these people here were just puppets and they were play-acting. They could not have behaved as they did if they had been real.

There were no longer any Roumanians there. They were all Hungarians together-just a few of them, all from Transylvania, the wretched, occupied territory, in which everybody was something of a slave, never allowed to forget for an instant that they were the defeated, and that they must submit. All were relatives or else very intimate friends. And after a while they began to notice that Philip and Anna were not there. At first they asked questions. Where were Philip and Anna? Elza said nothing. She only gave an answering look here and there, a quiver of the eyelid and certain setting of the lips. She did not say anything, but it was remarkable how everybody understood.

Rosemary watched every face and knew that they understood. They asked no more questions. They accepted the situation. Philip and Anna had gone. They had to go as countless others, who had to fly at dead of night, get the other side of the frontier as quickly as possible, to escape from military tribunal, chicanery, persecution, or even death.

It was late now, long past midnight. The gipsies had been sent downstairs to get some supper. The mammas and papas declared that it was time to go to bed. The young people thanked dear Aunt Elza for such a happy time, the young men kissed her hand. One or two of the older people whispered: "Good luck!" Others said reassuringly: "Don't fret, they will be all right." Never a question about Philip and Anna. Never a comment. They knew. They understood.

Orders were given for the carriages to be ready at nine o'clock the next morning. With the innate delicacy that underlay so much apparent pleasure-loving, they wished to relieve as soon as practicable this house of sorrow from the burden of their presence.

By half-past twelve ballroom, hall, reception-rooms, were all empty. Elza waited downstairs till the last of the servants had gone. Rosemary helped her at the last to put the gold service away in the strong cupboard. It consisted of half a dozen pieces of great artistic beauty and equally great value. Each piece had to be wrapped up in cotton wool and green baize. Elza did it all, and Rosemary could see that her podgy white hands did not tremble, and that she put every piece away with her usual meticulous care. Only when her task was accomplished and there was nothing more to do but switch off the light did Elza's stoicism give way. She sank into a chair, her head fell back against the cushions, and a leaden tint spread over her cheeks and lips. Rosemary quickly poured some brandy into a glass, and kneeling beside her tried to get her to drink some of it. To please her, Elza sipped a few drops. A wan smile spread over her face.

"Don't worry about me, Rosemary darling," she said, "I am quite well."

She jumped up at once and added: "I must see how poor Maurus is."

"Come into my room afterwards," Rosemary suggested, "and rest there on the sofa. I know you won't sleep."

"Yes," Elza replied, "I will come as soon as I can get Maurus to sleep. I think he may get to sleep presently. But I don't think I shall. You see, we ought to get a telephone message through from Hódmezö the first thing in the morning. Philip and I agreed on a code. If everything is all right he is to give Peter Blakeney's name and say that the weather is beautiful in Hungary, and every arrangement for the cricket match splendid. After I get that message I shall probably sleep."

She had toiled up the stairs while she was talking, and Rosemary followed close behind her, ready to catch her if she swooned.

"I won't say 'good night' now," Elza said when she near her bedroom door. You go to bed, Rosemary darling, and I will come in presently for a little talk when Maurus is asleep."

Rosemary went into her room. She undid her hair and slipped into a dressing-gown. It was no use going to bed; she knew she would not be able to go to sleep. It was just a case of waiting. Of watching, of praying, and commending those two young creatures to God. Watching and praying, with eyes fixed upon the hands of the clock, following in imagination every phase of to-nights adventures. Every detail. At this hour they would be at the mill, all the actors in the drama which poor Elza had invented. Philip and Anna would be there, changing into peasant's clothes, and János the miller would be setting out the mugs and the spirit, which would make the Jew's son and the brother of the Roumanian storekeeper blind to the world. Old Emma would be there too, the miller's wife, the mother of the two boys who were going to risk so much for Philip's sake and Anna's Emma would be fussing round with cloth and duster. Grumbling and fussing. Knowing nothing of the drama on which the curtain would ring up in the parlour of her cottage, and in which her two sons would be playing leading roles. János would not have told her. He, the father, had agreed to it all; had even suggested it. But the mother? No! If she knew she would protest. Weep, of course. Weaken the resolution of the two boys who just had to go through with it all.

And now the motor would be drawing up at the mill, and János the miller would ask the company to walk in and have a drink. Even the motor-driver would be persuaded. Just a drop of spirit, as it was a long drive all the way to Hódmezö. Time was moving leaden-footed up here in the château. But not so at the mill, while János was telling funny stories and plying his guests with drink. Leaden-footed! My God! how slowly did those clock hands move! Only half an hour gone by since Elza had switched off all the lights, and the whole château was plunged in darkness, and every sound was stilled.

So still! Only the ticking of the clock, and at times the click of the scissors of Fate, ready to cut the thread of two young lives—of more perhaps—if anything went wrong, if the slightest mistake was made, if any one man proved disloyal—or a liar.

Rosemary shuddered although the night was hot. She could not sit still. At times she felt that she could not breathe. She went out upon the balcony and listened. Listened. The air was so still that she felt she must hear presently the whir of the motor when it made a fresh start from the mill half a mile away. Far away on the hillside a fox gave a cry, and from the old thatched barn close by came the melancholy hoot of an owl.

Then the village church clock struck the half-hour. Half-past one. More than an hour since Rosemary, going into the ballroom, had noted that Philip and Anna were no longer there. In one of the homesteads on the outskirts of the village a cock crew. In another two hours dawn would be breaking, and the motor was to be in Hódmezö before sunrise. And suddenly Rosemary heard right through the stillness a crepitation and then a whir. And then the whirring died away very gradually, and stillness reigned once more. Absolute!

"They've started!"

It was Elza's voice close to Rosemary's elbow. Rosemary had not heard her timid knock, and Elza had slipped into the room and now stood by the open window, listening. The voice was quite calm, with just a ring in it of exultation rather than excitement. Rosemary took her hand. It was quite cold. She fondled it and warmed it between her own.

There was a wicker chair on the balcony and some cushions. Rosemary made Elza sit down, and then she piled up the cushions and squatted on them at Elza's feet, fondling her hands and caressing them by laying her young velvety cheek against them.

The night was exquisitely beautiful, with the waning moon mysterious and honey-coloured in a firmament shimmering with stars. In the borders the flowers slept, the evening primroses had folded their golden petals, the scarlet pentstemons hidden their brilliance in the gloom; only the heliotrope and the nicotiana swung their censers, lazily sending their heady perfume through the night, and the white tufted pansies shone like numberless tiny mirrors, reflecting the stars.

"Did Maurus get to sleep?" Rosemary asked after a while.

"Yes," Elza replied. "I gave him a cachet of aspirin. It quietened his nerves, and after a while he went to sleep."

"Won't you just close your eyes, Elza, and try to rest a little? The night is young yet, and I am afraid you'll be ill if you don't get a little rest. You've gone through so much!"

"Presently, darling," Elza said quietly. "I dare say I shall drop to sleep, as I am very tired. But not just yet. I would like to stay here a little longer-unless I am bothering you." Then, as Rosemary gave her knees an affectionate hug, she went on gently: "I love the smell of flowers in the night, don't you? They smell quite differently from what they do in the daytime." And presently she went on à propos of nothing at all:

"There is just one difficult place where the driver might miss his way. That would delay them a little, but even so they should be very near the frontier by now."

"Have you arranged to get any news?" Rosemary asked.

"Philip is to telephone from Hódmezö as soon as the office is open."

"You won't hear before then?"

"Yes. I told János to say to the motor-driver that if he will drive straight back here from Hódmezö there will be a thousand leis for him, and if he gets here before eight o'clock then he will get two thousand."

After the village church clock had struck three Elza became very still, but Rosemary did not think that she was actually asleep. Her hands were very cold, and her breath came and went more rapidly than usual. Rosemary rose noiselessly to her feet, she got the eiderdown from her bed and wrapped it round Elza's knees. Elza did not move. Her pretty, round face showed very white in the light of the waning moon, and all her hair seemed to have lost its golden tint and shimmered like threads of silver.

Rosemary went back into the room and lay down on the sofa. The air was very close, and she was very tired, so tired that she must have fallen asleep. Presently something roused her and she opened her eyes. The room was flooded with the golden light of dawn. She jumped to her feet and went to the window. Elza was not on the balcony; but Rosemary, looking over the balustrade, saw her on the veranda about to descent the steps.

"Elza," she called down softly, "wait for me."

Elza nodded acquiescence, and Rosemary ran down-stairs just as she was, in dressing-gown and slippers, with her hair all hanging loosely round her shoulders. Elza had waited on the veranda for her quite patiently; she linked her arm in Rosemary's.

"You were able to sleep a little, darling," she said. "I am so glad."

"And what about you, Elza?" Rosemary retorted.

"Oh, I slept quite nicely," Elza replied in her quiet, simple way," until the dawn closed the eyes of the night one by one, and the moon went down behind the old acacia trees."

"I quite forgot to look at the time," Rosemary rejoined.

"It was half-past four when I left your room. I went to have a peep at Maurus. He is still asleep."

"Thank God for that. He will only wake to hear the good news."

Rosemary could no longer keep the excitement out of her voice. Another two or three hours and this terrible suspense would be over. She hardly dared to look at Elza, for she felt the dear creature's body quivering against hers. The first glance had shown her Elza's face the colour of ashes, with swollen eyelids and red hectic spots on her cheek-bones. But outwardly she was still quite calm, and when together they reached the dew-wet lawn she threw back her head and with obvious delight drank in the sweet morning air.

"It is astonishing," she said, "that one should be able to sleep when-when things happen like they did to-night."

"You were dog-tired, Elza, and the air was so wonderfully balmy and soothing. I think," Rosemary went on gently, "that God sent down a couple of his guardian angels to fan you to sleep with their wings."

"Perhaps," Elza assented with a tired smile.

"Do you feel like a walk, as far as the perennial border?"

"Why, yes. I should love it. And we still have hours to kill."

Already sounds of awakening village life filled the morning with their welcome strains. The fox and the owl were silent, but two cocks gave answer to one another, and from the homesteads and the farms came a lowing and a bleating and a barking, the beasts rousing the humans to activity and calling them to the work of the day.

As Elza's and Rosemary's footsteps crunched the gravel of the path, Mufti, the big sheep-dog, and Karo, the greyhound, came from nowhere in particular, bounding across the lawn, and threw themselves, in the exuberance of their joy, upon these two nice humans who had shortened the lonely morning hours for them.

"Let's go and see the moss-roses," Rosemary suggested, "see if they smell as sweet as they did in the night."

They walked on to the end of the perennial border, where two or three clumps of moss-roses nestled at the foot of a tall crimson Rugosa laden with blossom.

"Dear little things," Elza said. "They are my favourite flowers. I like them so much better than all those wonderful new roses that get the prizes at the horticultural shows."

She stooped to inhale the fragrance of the roses, and while she was stooping a faint, very distant whirring sound became audible, which grew in volume every moment. Just for the space of one second Elza did not move; she remained just as she was, stooping and with her face buried in the roses. Then she straightened out her fine figure and grasped Rosemary's hand.

"The motor," she said huskily. "Let us go."

The end of the perennial border where they were was nearly a quarter of a mile away from the house; and then there was the house to get round, the courtyard to cross— The whirring grew louder every moment, then slower, and then it ceased. The car had come to a halt, but not in front of the gates, which were still closed. Rosemary and Elza were in the courtyard with Mufti and Karo jumping about them and getting in the way. The motor was not in sight.

"Down, Mufti! Karo, down!" Elza kept repeating mechanically.

She was rather breathless after that race across the garden. Rosemary ran to the lodge to call Feri, the night-watchman, who had the keys of the gate. He had heard the dogs barking and the voice of the gracious countess, so he was on the doorstep wondering what had brought the ladies out at this hour of the morning.

"Quick, Feri, open the gates!" Rosemary called to him.

It took Feri a few moments to get the keys to unlock the gates. An eternity.

From the direction of the village there had come a loud cry, followed after a few seconds by shouts and the sound of men running. Running and shouting, and now and then another shrill cry.

"Run ahead quickly, Feri," Rosemary whispered to the watchman. "Quickly, see what it is."

She held Elza's hand in the tight clutch, and under her arm. But even so Elza succeeded in breaking free, and while Feri ran on ahead, she did not lag far behind. Past the thick clump of acacias, the village street came in sight. At the end of it, a quarter of a mile away, in front of the inn which was kept by the Jew, a motorcar had come to a halt, and some half-dozen peasants stood round it, gesticulating and arguing. Down the street, from one or two of the cottages, men, women and children came running out to see what was happening, and when they caught sight of the gracious countess and the gracious foreign lady they paused, bewildered. The gracious countess-at this hour in the village! Such a thing had never happened before. The men doffed their hats, the women hastily bobbed a curtsy, the children stood stock-still, finger in mouth, staring. A few, bolder than the rest, ran forward to kiss the ladies' hands. But Elza hastened on, seeing nothing, heeding nothing, whilst Rosemary kept close by her side. Feri, as he drew near to the inn, shouted to the people to make way. But as soon as he came in close sight of the car he turned and hastened back to Elza. He clasped his hands together and cried:

"Don't come, gracious countess. Don't come! It is nothing, nothing, just an accident, a—"

Silently, with lips tightly pressed together, Elza pushed past him, but Rosemary now had once more taken hold of her hand. She held Elza tight, with one arm round her waist and the other clutching her hand. Struggle as she might, Elza could not free herself this time.

The next moment they stood together by the side of the motor. It was a large, rather shabby touring car, painted a dull grey and fitted with leather cushions. It was smothered in dust. There was no one in the back seats, but the innkeeper was just in the act of climbing in beside the chauffeur. The chauffeur appeared to be asleep; he sat like a huddled-up heap, wrapped in a dirty, military coat, and with his peaked cap pulled down over his face. The innkeeper appeared rather scared. He took hold of the military coat and pulled it open, and immediately he clapped his hand to his mouth, smothering a scream. The cap rolled off the chauffeur's head, and his right arm dropped down the side of the car. One man who stood quite near, not knowing probably that the two ladies were there, cried excitedly:

"God in heaven! The man has been shot-dead!"

CHAPTER XXV

There was no one there quite so self-possessed as Elza. Even Rosemary had some difficulty in smothering a cry. The innkeeper jumped down from the seat as if he had been driven away by a whip; the peasants gesticulated and jabbered in an undertone. Rosemary looked at Elza and clutched her hand more tightly against her own body. Elza's face was the colour of lead, her lips looked purple, even her large, blue eyes appeared colourless. Her hand was as cold as ice and shook in Rosemary's strength-giving clasp. But to the eyes of all these peasants and subordinates she appeared perfectly calm, and after a moment or two she turned to the group of jabbering, gesticulating peasants and asked quite quietly:

"Which of you first saw the motor draw up?"

"I heard the noise, gracious countess," the Jew volunteered, "as the car drew up outside the door, and—"

"And I saw the soldier jump down," a young labourer broke in excitedly. "He ran—"

"Very well," Elza said coldly. "Now you, and you," she went on and pointed to the innkeeper and to the labourer, "come inside and tell me what you have seen. Will you come, too, darling?" she asked Rosemary.

Finally she turned to her own man Feri:

"One of you," she said, "had better go to the gendarmerie. They ought to have been here by now."

Then she went into the inn; the Jew and the labourer followed, and the peasants, having looked their fill at the car, or else scared by that lifeless bundle in the chauffeur's seat, crowded together in the doorway of the inn. But Rosemary lagged behind for a moment, examining the car as if she expected the huge, shabby thing to yield up the key of its own mystery. But in the body of the car there was nothing, except the cushions and the dust and the huddled figure of the dead chauffeur, with the head fallen forward on the breast, and the arm hanging over the side of the car. Rosemary turned away from it at first with a shudder, but almost despite her will her eyes turned back to gaze again at that huddled-up heap and the limp arm, from beneath the coat-sleeve of which a thin filet of blood trickled drop by drop to the ground.

And suddenly something white and crisp fell from the lifeless hand into the dust at Rosemary's feet. She stooped and picked it up. Fortunately the jabbering peasants were not looking this way, and Feri had walked off to the gendarmerie. What Rosemary had picked up was a letter addressed to "Lady Tarkington." She tore open the envelope and read:

"A very clumsy attempt, dear lady. As you see, it has led to no good. Your two protégés are now under my direct care, and you have little more than a fortnight in which to write the newspaper articles which I want."

The letter was signed "Naniescu." Rosemary slipped it into the pocket of her gown, and then she went into the inn. The peasants all made way for her, and then crowded again in the doorway, trying to hear what was going on. Rosemary thought the long, low room one of the stuffiest and most evil-smelling places she had ever been in. It was very dark, the light only feebly penetrating through two tiny, impracticable windows, the panes of which were covered in dust. The only breath of fresh air that could possibly find its way in would have been through the door, but that was blocked now by a solid bundle of perspiring humanity. From the low raftered ceiling hung strings of onions and maize, and in a corner of the room, on a low table which was apparently used as a counter, were numerous bottles and a number of pewter mugs. The odour in the room was a mixture of dirt, onions and silvorium. But Elza, who sat beside the table with the innkeeper and the peasants before her, appeared quite unconscious of smells or dirt. She was questioning the labourer, who apparently was the only man who had actually witnessed the arrival of the motor-car into the village.

"I saw it come, gracious countess," he said, with obvious pride in his own importance, "and I saw it draw up outside here. There was a soldier sitting near the chauffeur."

"And he was in the driving seat?" Elza asked.

"Yes, gracious countess, the soldier was driving when I first saw the car come along the road."

"And the other man?"

"Well, gracious countess, I saw a sort of heaped-up bundle beside the chauffeur. I did not know there was another man."

"Well, then what happened?"

"The car slowed down, gracious countess, and drew up outside here. Then the soldier jumped up; he stepped over the heaped-up bundle and got out of the car."

"Yes, and then?"

"He took the thing which I thought was just a bundle covered with a military coat, and pushed it into the driver's seat. After that he ran away as fast as he could."

"In which direction?"

"Where he had come from, gracious countess. There was another car waiting for him there about half a kilometre away."

"Another car?"

"Yes; I didn't see it come, but I heard it slow down and come to a halt. The soldier ran all the way. He jumped into that other car, and it drove away in the direction of Cluj."

After that another man stepped in from the doorway and volunteered the information that he had seen the second car standing about half a kilometre away. He had seen the soldier running, and had seen the car drive off. He thought there was another soldier in that car.

By that time a couple of gendarmes were on the scene. They were conducting their own investigations of the case in a casual, perfunctory manner. At first they took no notice of Elza or of Rosemary, talked over their heads in a proper democratic manner; then one of them asked curtly of Elza:

"Did you see the car drive up?"

Elza said: "No!"

"Do you know anything about it?"

Again she replied: "No!"

Whereupon the man queried roughly: "Then what are you doing here?"

Elza's face flushed a little, but she replied quite courteously: "We all hoped at the castle to hear that the miller's two sons had arrived safely at Hódmezö, and I thought that this was the car that drove them in the night."

The man gave a sneer and a shrug of the shoulders.

"You seem mightily concerned," he said, with a harsh laugh, "about the miller's sons, to be out of your bed at this hour of the morning."

He spat on the ground, turned on his heel, and once more addressed the peasants.

"Now, then," he said, quite genially, "all of you get back to your homes. The Government will see about this affair, and it is no concern of anybody's. Understood?"

The two gendarmes waved their arms and drove the people out of the inn and away from the door as if they were a flock of sheep. They obeyed without murmur, only with an occasional shrug of the shoulders, as much as to say: "Well, well, these are strange times, to be sure! But it is no concern of ours."

The gendarmes then went out of the inn. They moved the body of the dead chauffeur into the body of the car; one of them got in beside it, the other took the driver's seat, and the next moment the mysterious car had disappeared up the village street in the direction of the gendarmerie.

When the last of the crowd had dispersed, Elza rose and, white-faced, wide-eyed, she turned to Rosemary.

"There is nothing more," she said, "that we can do here. Shall we go home?"

She nodded to the Jew, and, leaning heavily on Rosemary's arm, she went out into the street. It was past six now, and the village was flooded with sunlight. Elza's tired, aching eyes blinked as she came out into the open. rosemary would have put an arm round her to support her, for she felt that the poor woman was ready to swoon; but mutely and firmly Elza refused to be supported. Her pride would not allow her, even now, to show weakness in sight of these cottages, behind the windows of which the eyes of Roumanian peasants might be on the look-out for her.

"They are outwardly obsequious," she said, as if in answer to a mute remark from Rosemary. "Call me gracious countess and kiss my hand, but at heart they hate us all, and triumph in our humiliation."

Strange, wonderful people! Even at this hour of supreme anxiety and acute distress, pride of caste fought every outward expression of sorrow and conquered in the end. Elza walked through the village with a firm step and head held quite erect. It was only when she was inside the gates of her own home that she spoke, and even then her first thought was for her husband.

"How to break the news to Maurus!" she murmured under her breath. "My God, how to break the news."

In the hall, where Rosemary saw that they were quite alone, she put her arms round Elza and drew her down into a low-cushioned seat.

"Elza, darling," she said gently, "have a real cry, it will do you good."

Elza shook her head.

"It won't bring Philip back," she said dully, "nor Anna. Will it?"

Her big, round eyes gazed with pathetic inquiry into Rosemary's face. She seemed to have some sort of intuition that her English friend could help-that she could do something for Philip, even now. Rosemary, her eyes swimming in tears, slowly shook her head. And with a low moan, Elza buried her face in the cushions, convulsive sobs shook her shoulders, and little cries of pain broke intermittently from her lips. Rosemary made no attempt to touch her. She let her cry on. Perhaps it was for the best. There was nobody about, and tears were sometimes a solace. The quietude, the stoicism of the past two hours, had been unnatural, racking alike to heart, nerves and brain. There was a limit to human endurance, and Elza had reached it at last.

When the worst of the paroxysm was over, Rosemary suggested gently: "Would you like me to break the news to Maurus? I'll do it most carefully, and I am afraid the strain would be too much for you."

But already Elza had struggled to her feet. She was wiping her eyes, then breathing on her handkerchief and dabbing them with it.

"No, no, my dear," she said between the dry, intermittent sobs that still shook her poor weary body, "not on any account. I understand Maurus. I know just what to say. Poor, poor Maurus! He has so little self-control. But I shall know what to say. You go and get your bath now, darling," she went on, gently disengaging herself from Rosemary's arms, "and get dressed. It will refresh you. I will do the same before I speak to Maurus. Rosa shall bring your coffee in half an hour. Will that do?"

She forgot noting, thought of everything-Rosemary's bath, her breakfast, the guest. Ah, yes, the guests! Rosemary had forgotten all about them. It was long past six now; they would soon be up. All of them wanting breakfast, baths, attention. Elza forgot nothing. Thank God that she had so much to think about!

"You go up, darling," she said to Rosemary. "I shall be quite all right. Don't worry about me."

One or two servants came through the hall, busy with their work. Elza had something to say, some order to give to all of them.

"Tell the chef," she said to Anton, "to come and speak to me here. And don't go into the gracious count's room until I call you."

Rosemary lingered in the hall a moment or two longer, until the chef, in immaculate white, tall linen cap in hand, came for his orders. Elza immediately entered into a long conversation with him on the subject of milk rolls for breakfast. And Rosemary at last went slowly up the stairs. Almost without knowing it, she found herself once more in her room, the pretty, old-fashioned room with the huge bedstead and the curtains embroidered in cross-stitch. How pretty it looked, and how peaceful! Through the open window came the sound of bird-song; a blackbird was whistling, a thrush was singing, a hundred sparrows were chirruping, and on the large lily leaves on the ornamental lake a frog was sitting croaking. So peaceful, so still! And, heavens above, what a tragedy within these walls!

For a while Rosemary stood at the open window gazing out upon the beautiful panorama laid out before her, the prim, well-kept garden the flower borders, the shady park, and out, far away, the wooded heights, the forests of oak and pine which the morning sun had just tinted with gold.

And with a sudden impulse Rosemary fell on her knees, just where she was, at the open window, and she stretched out her arms towards the Invisible, the Unattainable, the Almighty, and from her heart there came a cry, forced through her lips by the intensity of despair:

"Oh God! My God! Tell me what to do!"

CHAPTER XXVI

If Rosemary had been gifted with second sight!

She would have seen at the moment when she, in despair, turned to the great Healer for comfort, General Naniescu and his friend M. de Kervoisin enjoying their petit déjeuner in one of the palatial rooms of the Imrey's house in Cluj. M. de Kervoisin had arrived the night before. He was the guest of the general, and after a night's rest was enjoying the company of his host, as well as the luxury of these beautiful apartments so thoughtfully placed at the disposal of the military Governor of Transylvania by the Roumanian Government.

M. de Kervoisin was also enjoying the anxieties to which his friend was a prey in his capacity of Governor of this unruly country. There is something in a friend's troubles that is not altogether displeasing to a philosopher. And M. de Kervoisin was a philosopher. He had come over to give advice to his friend, and the role of adviser in a difficult situation was one which he knew how to fulfil with infinite discretion and supreme tact. Just now, while sipping a cup of most excellent café-au-lait, he listened with every mark of sympathy to Naniescu's account of the terrible trouble he was having with a certain obstinate lady journalist who would not do what he wanted.

"I have only asked her," he lamented, "for a few articles to be published in The Times which would put us right with the British and American public; but you know what women are. They never see farther than their noses. And this one, damn her, is like a mule. So far I have not been able to move her."

He had finished his breakfast, and with a pungent havana between his fingers, was waving his podgy, hairy hands to emphasize his words.

Kervoisin smiled. "And you want those newspaper articles?" he asked. "Seriously?"

"Seriously," Naniescu assented. "My Government has become suspicious. They are treating me very badly, you know. They began by giving me a free hand. 'No more plottings and counter-plottings in Transylvania,' they said to me when they sent me out here. 'It is your business to see that things work smoothly out there. How you do it is your affair.' Well," the general went on in an aggrieved tone, "you would construe that order into a free hand for me, would you not?"

M. de Kervoisin carefully spread butter on a piece of excellent fresh roll before he answered: "Yes, I think I should."

"Of course," Naniescu retorted; "so would anyone. And I was doing very well, too, until that young fool Imrey managed to send his newspaper articles over to England. And at once my Government got restive. You know those articles were pretty hot!"

"Yes, I know. But I always thought you attached too much importance to them. Mon Dieu! Confiscations, perquisitions, arrests and even executions, they are the inevitable consequences of foreign occupation." And M. de Kervoisin took a little honey with his bread and butter, and poured himself out another cup of coffee. "And you know," he went on with a shrug, "the British and American public are really very indifferent to what goes on out here. Cluj is such a long way from London or New York. For a time the public is interested, a few are indignant, one or two make a fuss and ask questions in their Parliament, but, after all, you are one of the Allies; you must not be too openly criticized. The man who asks uncomfortable questions in Parliament is rebuked: et puis voilà!"

"I know all that," Naniescu rejoined with some impatience, "but unfortunately my Government does not think as you do. Their vanity suffers when they are attacked in English newspapers, and then they vent their spleen on me."

M. de Kervoisin said nothing for a moment or two; then he remarked blandly: "I think I understand the position-now."

"There is a talk of my resignation," the general added curtly.

M. de Kervoisin smiled. "And you don't want to resign?" he asked.

"Of course not. Five thousand sterling a year; it is a fortune in this miserable country; and then there are the perquisites."

M. de Kervoisin had finished his breakfast. He pushed his cup and plate on one side, and resting both his elbows on the table, looked intently at his friend, while a sarcastic smile curled round his thin lips.

"So," he said, "you imagined this little scheme for putting yourself right before your Government-and before the world-by getting the beautiful Uno to write glowing accounts of your marvellous administration of Transylvania, for the benefit of English and American readers? Is that it?"

"Well, wouldn't you?" Naniescu retorted.

"Yes. But you are not succeeding, my friend," M. de Kervoisin added with the suspicion of a sneer. "What?"

"I shall succeed in the end," Naniescu rejoined. "With the help of my friend—" But at this point he was silenced by a peremptory gesture of his friend's hand.

"S-sh!" de Kervoisin broke in quickly. "I shouldn't mention his name-not even here."

"Oh, we are safe enough."

"Walls have ears, my friend," the other riposted, "even in this perfectly administered land. And our friend's work would be futile if his identity was suspected. I introduced him to you as Number Ten. Number Ten let him remain."

"I suppose I can trust him," Naniescu mused. "You assured me that I could. But bah!" he added with a contemptuous shrug. "Can one trust those English?"

"You can trust this one," Kervoisin retorted curtly. "He was the best spy we had during the war."

"During the war-yes! The man might think he was serving the entire Allied cause by serving you. But now! And here! Frankly, I don't understand the man's motive. He is rich, well born, and he is playing a terribly risky game for us, who are nothing to him."

"He is not running terrible risks for you, my friend, don't you worry," de Kervoisin retorted with a mocking smile. "Though he may have reasons which we don't know for hating the Hungarians, he certainly has none for loving you; and you are one of the Allies, and to a large section of the British public his work would not be called very heinous, seeing that it is in your service and directed against ex-enemies. However, let that pass. I attribute to Number Ten a very different motive for his actions than the mere desire of serving you."

"And what is that?"

"Money, for one thing. He is not as rich as you think, and has extravagant tastes. But that is not all. I know the English better than you do, my friend, and I can tell you that Number Ten would just call his work sport; and for sport, adventure-what?-a certain type of Englishman will do anything, dare anything, risk everything. A hundred and fifty years ago they had their Scarlet Pimpernel, who gave the Revolutionary Government of France a deal of trouble at the time. Now they have their Number Ten. The same spirit animates this man that animated the other-one for good, the other, perhaps, for evil. Just the spirit of adventure. A cycle of years has woven a halo of romance round the personality of the Scarlet Pimpernel, and to us Number Ten still appears as sordid, just a miserable paid spy in the service of an alien Government. But believe me that many Englishmen and even women will forgive him when they know him for what he is, because they will put it down to a love of adventure-to sport, which is the only motive the English appreciate."

He took his cigarette-case out of his pocket, carefully selected a cigarette, thrust it between his lips and lighted it. All the while Naniescu had remained thoughtful. "You may be right," he said finally. His was not an analytical mind; he was quite content to accept de Kervoisin's explanation of the mystery that had vaguely puzzled him; and, anyway, he did not care. Whatever motive animated the mysterious spy, the man was very useful, and in the matter of Philip Imrey and Anna Heves and of the obstinate lady journalist he had had one or two brilliant ideas.

De Kervoisin smoked on in silence for awhile, then he said:

"Our friend does not seem to be coming. I hope there has been no hitch."

"There could be no hitch," Naniescu asserted. "But it is two hours' drive to Kis-Imre and two hours back here. Will you wait a moment?" he went on, and rose to his feet. "I'll see if they've any news downstairs in the office. I told Number Ten to telephone from Kis-Imre when he got there."

Downstairs in the office they had nothing definite to report. No message had come through from Kis-Imre. But even whilst Naniescu was storming and fuming, blaming his subordinates, who obviously were not responsible for the delay, a man wrapped, despite the heat, in a huge stained and worn military coat, and wearing a soiled képi, crossed the courtyard from the direction of the entrance gates towards the principal staircase of the house. Naniescu saw him from the window and ran out into the hall. He met the man just as he was entering the house, and at once greeted him with the greatest effusion.

"Is everything all right?" he asked hurriedly.

"All right," the man answered curtly. "Of course."

"Kervoisin is upstairs," Naniescu went on. "Come and tell us all about it."

He ran upstairs two at a time; the man in the military coat followed more slowly.

"Here is Number Ten," Naniescu announced, as he ushered the man into the room where Kervoisin was patiently waiting and smoking cigarettes. Kervoisin rose at once, a word of welcome on his lips. But at sight of the man he paused and frowned, obviously mystified, until gradually his face cleared and he exclaimed:

" Bon Dieu! I should never have known you."

"I do look a disgusting object, don't I?" the man retorted. He shook hands cordially with Kervoisin; then he threw off his heavy coat and sank, obviously exhausted, into a chair.

"A cup of coffee?" Naniescu suggested.

"Thanks!" the other replied.

He drank the coffee, then took a cigarette from the case which de Kervoisin offered him. He looked a regular vagrant, with face and neck stained both with grease paint and with grime, his hands were soiled with motor grease, and his hair hung lank and matted into his eyes. He had what looked like a two weeks' growth of beard on his chin and upper lip, and his clothes-if indeed what he wore could be called clothes-were a mere bundle of rags.

"Number Ten," de Kervoisin said with conviction, "you are an artist. I have seen our friend here," he went on, turning to Naniescu, "in any number of disguises, but never two alike, and every new one a surprise!"

"You flatter me, sir," Number Ten said with an almost imperceptible sneer.

"But I am afraid you must be very tired," de Kervoisin resumed affably. "I told the general last night that he might just as well have sent one of his subordinates on this errand."

"I like to finish my work myself," Number Ten rejoined curtly.

Whereupon Naniescu threw up his hairy, fat hands and exclaimed in wonderment:

"Ils sont impayables, ces Anglais!"

"Then we may take it," de Kervoisin went on, "that the work is finished?"

"Yes, finished," Number Ten replied. "We spotted the car on the road about five kilometres from Cluj. The patrol summoned the driver to stop, but the man had obviously had his orders; he swerved sharply to the right and put on speed to try and rush through, So I shot him."

"Ah! these English," Naniescu exclaimed complacently; "they are wonderful!"

But de Kervoisin only expressed the mildest possible surprise by a very slight lifting of his eyebrows.

"Yourself?" was all he said.

"Yes," the other replied. "The patrol was on the other side of the road, but I guessed what would happen, so I had brought my horse to a halt about two hundred metres higher up."

"And," Naniescu asked blandly, "you killed the chauffeur?"

"Of course," the other sneered. "I was not likely to miss him, was I?"

But Naniescu could only smile, and sigh, and murmur: "Oh, those English! Voyez-moi çà!"

"There were two men in the body of the car," Number Ten continued coolly, "they were dead drunk. Philip Imrey and the girl were on the front seats. I gave my horse in charge of the patrol and took the wheel. We were in Cluj outside the gaol soon after two o'clock. I saw the chief superintendent and gave the three men and the girl in his charge."

"Yes! Yes!" Naniescu broke in glibly, and turned to de Kervoisin, "he had all instructions. Everything was ready. I have seen him since. Philip Imrey and Anna Heves are in separate cells, and the two drunken oafs he dispatched by train to Hódmezö. They did not seem to know what had happened, and it was no use detaining them."

"None whatever," Number Ten said dryly. "They were just drunken oafs, as you say. With the miller and his two sons you will have to deal presently-that is, if your second patrol succeeded in capturing the sons. I couldn't be in two places at once, and they may have crossed the frontier. Anyway, that's your affair, not mine."

"Of course, of course," Naniescu said airily. And de Kervoisin put in rather impatiently:

"What about the car and the dead chauffeur?"

"I drove both out to Kis-Imre," Number Ten replied deliberately. "The best way to let people there know what had happened. The General agreed to it."

"Was that your brilliant idea?"

"Mine!" Number Ten replied curtly.

And suddenly through the paint and the grime a look of almost inhuman cruelty distorted his face: the thin lips drew back tight above the red gums, and the sharp teeth gleamed white like those of a wolf. It was the recollection of a note which Naniescu had scribbled at his dictation, and which he, Number Ten, had thrust into the hand of the dead chauffeur for the perusal of an obstinate woman, that brought that wolf-like look into his face. His eyes almost disappeared beneath the strand of false eyebrows and the thick layers of paint upon the lids, and his hands opened out and were clutched again like the talons of a bird of prey.

For the space of a second or two Number Ten looked hideous. De Kervoisin, who was watching him, was conscious of an uncomfortable shudder: Naniescu fortunately was looking another way, and the whole episode was over in a moment; the next, Number Ten was once more leaning back in his chair, looking weary, grimy and ill-tempered, but there was nothing supernatural about him, except perhaps his amazing change from one personality to another.

"How did you get back here?" Kervoisin asked after a moment's pause.

I have a car which our friend the general has placed at my disposal, with a soldier-driver. I ordered him to follow me to within half a kilometre of Kis-Imre."

"No one stopped you?"

"No one."

"I suppose you got to Kis-Imre before anyone was astir?"

"I won't say that. The ladies at the château were astir."

"And they saw you?"

"No. I had reached my own car, and was on the point of driving off when I saw them coming through the gates of the château."

"You would not have liked them to see you, I imagine," Naniescu put in with a chuckle.

"They wouldn't have known me," Number Ten retorted quietly.

"Heu! heu!" the general rejoined with a shrug. "There are certain eyes that are reported to be very sharp."

"Anyway," Number Ten broke in coolly, "no one saw me except an oaf from the village, so why discuss the point?"

And strangely enough General Naniescu, usually so dictatorial and so arrogant, did not seem to resent the gruffness of this man who was in his pay. On the contrary, he laughed good-humouredly and rested his fat hand with a gesture of almost affection on the shoulder of the spy.

"Ah, ces chers 'Anglais!" he sighed fatuously whilst de Kervoisin turned quite politely to Number Ten with the bland question: "And what is your next move, my dear friend?"

"To get those articles out of the fair Uno," Naniescu interposed hurriedly before the other had time to reply. "That point must not be lost sight of."

"I am not likely to lose sight of it," the other riposted dryly, "seeing that I am to get ten thousand pounds sterling for them. I suppose you think they are worth it?" he added, turning with his habitual sneer to Naniescu.

"I think," the general replied slowly, "that with the arrest of Philip Imrey and Anna Heves, which, when it becomes known, will deter other young fools from playing the same game—with that, I say, as a make-weight, I think the articles will be worth the money—to my Government and to me."

"Well," Number Ten rejoined coolly, "I shouldn't have done your dirty work for less."

And Naniescu once more gave a fatuous sigh and murmured:

"Ils sont impayables, ces Anglais!" whilst de Kervoisin smiled as a philosopher smiles on follies and stupidities with which he has no concern. Then he asked Number Ten: "And when do you return to civilization, my friend-to decent clothes and a bath?"

"At once," the other replied, "unless I am wanted for something else."

"No, no, my dear man," the general rejoined, with perfect affability. "I am quite content to leave everything in your hands."

"And when do you want those articles?"

"Shall we say within the week?

"You shall have them," Number Ten said coolly as he rose from his chair. He nodded to Kervoisin, who responded cordially: "A bientôt, mon ami!" Then he turned to go; but already Naniescu was on his feet.

"I'll escort you," he said hospitably, "in case you meet anyone on the stairs. In your present get-up," he added with his oily, guttural laugh, "it might be awkward."

"Thank you," the other assented coolly, and, gathering up the dirty old military coat, he strode to the door. Naniescu was already there, holding it open for him.

"You will stay and have lunch with M. de Kervoisin and me, I hope," he said.

"I think not, thank you," the other replied.

"Ah! You are going to Hódmezö, perhaps-or to Kis-Imre?"

And Number Ten replied, with his habitual curtness:

"That is my affair."

De Kervoisin, who still sat smoking, chuckled at this. A scene such as this was part of a philosopher's enjoyment. Naniescu threw him a look, and shrugged his shoulders. De Kervoisin could almost hear him reiterating his stock phrase: "Ils sont impayables, ces Anglais!"

After that the two men went out of the room and de Kervoisin remained, sitting and smoking, with a thin smile on his colourless lips-the smile of a philosopher who sees the humour of a situation which to a less keen mind would only appear obscure and topsy-turvy, and after a while he murmured softly to himself:

"They certainly are remarkable, these English!"

Memory had brought back to his mind that cruel, wolf-like look which for one unguarded moment had distorted the features of the spy. There was, then, some motive other than greed or love of sport, that had pushed the Englishman into doing this dirty work. Hatred? Love? Perhaps. Passion? Certainly.

"I wonder now!" mused M. de Kervoisin.

And being a Frenchman as well as a philosopher he was deeply interested in this new problem.

CHAPTER XXVII

But Rosemary was not gifted with second sight, and she saw nothing of this while she knelt at the open window of her pretty room at Kis-Imre. She was in such an agony of mind, that for a time she became almost insentient. Presently, dressed as she was, she threw herself upon the bed, because she was dog-tired and had no longer the power to feel or to suffer. Even the well of her sympathy appeared to be dry. She could not bring herself to think of Elza or of Maurus, or to feel for them; even Philip and Anna seemed blotted from her mind. An intense self-pity absorbed every other sensation for the moment. She felt herself in such a hopeless impasse that she had not even the strength to beat her hands against the walls that had so completely closed her in.

And so she lay there for an hour and more while life in the château went on, unheeded by her. Long afterwards she heard that, as arranged, the guests all departed soon after nine o'clock, that Elza had been there to see them off, looking after their comforts, bidding them good-bye and tendering hospitable little invitations for the future. Wonderful as always! Rosemary saw nothing of that. She only heard of it afterwards, when she saw Elza again an hour or two later. For the time being she was just a log-neither thinking nor feeling; conscious only of that intense self-pity which was so humiliating, because her senses were so numb that she had not the power to trace that self-pity to its source. While she lay on her bed, blind, deaf, dumb, she did not know that she suffered; she did not know that she lived.

But this state of coma was the one concession to weakness. A giving in. It was not the least like Rosemary; and as consciousness slowly returned and with it the power to feel, she felt humiliated on account of that weakness which was foreign to her. Fortunately no one had witnessed it. Dear, wonderful Elza had had her hands full, and the departing guests had only thought of being discreet and tactful and of leaving this stricken home without putting too great a strain upon the self-control of their hostess. They did not know, of course, that tragedy had followed on the exciting events of last night; but they asked no questions, well knowing that good news spreads like wildfire, and guessing perhaps by Elza's set face and expressionless eyes that something was not altogether right.

Anyhow, they went away, and after their departure the house became still-very still. Presently Rosemary had her bath and dressed, then left the room to go and search for Elza. So far she had not been able to gather anything from Rosa's stolid, round face. The girl went about her work as if nothing special had happened; only when Rosemary was ready to go downstairs and gave Rosa a final nod, the girl suddenly said with an excited little gasp: "The gracious count Philip and the Baroness Anna will be in Hungary by now, won't they, gracious lady?"

Rosemary nodded. "We hope so," she murmured.

She waited in the hall for a little while, hoping that Elza would presently be coming downstairs; but a quarter of an hour later Anton came running down and made straight for the telephone.

"What is it, Anton?" Rosemary asked.

"The gracious count," the man replied hurriedly. "He is ill. I am telephoning to Cluj for the doctor."

"What is it, do you know?"

"No, gracious lady, the countess did not say, but I think it is the heart. The gracious count has fainted, and—"

After that Anton was busy with the telephone, and Rosemary wandered aimlessly into the drawing-room and out upon the veranda.

Maurus ill! Yet another calamity striking that unfortunate woman! Indeed, there was no room for self-pity in this house. Every feeling of love, of sympathy and of pity must be concentrated on Elza. She stood alone, just as Rosemary stood alone. Two women, each with their burden. Elza with a load of boundless sorrow and anxiety, and Rosemary with a terrible responsibility to face. Elza was helpless; she could only watch and pray. But Rosemary had the choice between waiting and acting. Sentiment on the one side; Philip, Anna, Elza and Maurus, people she knew and loved; and duty on the other, duty to others, to countless of unknown innocents, to mothers, to father, to wives. "What are they to me?" cried sentiment. "The few for the many," was the command of duty. Heart and brain in direct conflict and no one to advise, no one to help, save God, and He was silent! The affairs of men are so futile in face of the Infinite.

Later on in the day the doctor came over in his motor from Cluj, and after his visit Elza escorted him down into the hall. This was the first glimpse that Rosemary had of her since the morning, and the sight of her was a terrible shock; Elza was aged, her hair had lost its lustre, her eyes their colour, her cheeks were the colour of lead, and even her magnificent figure had shrunk. Elza looked an old woman, wide-eyed and scared as if Fate was a tangible being standing perpetually before her with flail upraised, striking, striking incessantly, until the poor, weak shoulders bent under the blows, and the last vestige of youth fled, chased away by pain.

As soon as the doctor had gone Elza came back to Rosemary.

"Poor Maurus," she said. "Have you heard?"

"What is the matter?" Rosemary asked.

Elza hesitated a moment, then she said:

"As a matter of fact, it was a fit. He had had them before, and you know he was always peculiar. And now the shock! The doctor says we shall have to be very careful with him. He must be watched and kept very quiet."

"Had you told him?"

"Yes; it is that which brought on the fit. The doctor asked me if he had been more than usually agitated the last day or two."

"But he is in no danger?" Rosemary insisted.

"The doctor says not. But then he does not know. If—if the worst happens with—Philip, I don't think that Maurus will live it through."

Elza had allowed Rosemary to lead her into the drawing-room. She sank down against the cushions and Rosemary knelt beside her, with her arms round the poor woman's shoulders.

"Darling," she murmured, "is there anything I can do?"

"No, dear, nothing. What can you do? We are only atoms. So helpless! We can only suffer. I suppose that God wants some of us to suffer, and others to be happy. It seems strange and unjust, but we cant help it. We must just get through with it." Elza spoke jerkily, in a dry, cracked voice, without the slightest ring or modulation in its dull monotony.

"Am I in the way, Elza darling?" Rosemary went on, trying with loving eyes to probe the secret thoughts that lay hidden behind that set, expressionless face. Elza turned large, round eyes upon her, and for an instant a gleam of tenderness shot through them.

"You are not in the way, darling," she said. "I don't know what I should have done this morning if you had not been there to brace me up. But it is miserable and dull for you here. Fancy you coming all the way from England into this house of misery!"

"If you sent me away now," Rosemary said, "I should break my heart with longing to be near you. But-I didn't know whether you would not rather be alone—"

"Alone? I should indeed be alone if you went away. Now that the children are not here . . . and Maurus must be kept very quiet-I should be very lonely if you went."

Rosemary gave her hand a little squeeze.

"But Jasper will be coming soon," she said. "I am sure you won't want him."

"Lord Tarkington is so kind," Elza replied gently, "and he would be company for you. The doctor is sending me a couple of nursing sisters from Cluj, but you know what Maurus is. He gets so impatient if I am not there. So we shall not see much of one another. But it would be a comfort to me to know that you are in the house."

"You are an angel, Elza, and I am glad that you are not sending me away. If you did I should not go very far. Probably to Cluj. I could not exist far away from you whilst I had a glimmer of hope. In my heart, darling," Rosemary went on earnestly, "I am still convinced that God will not permit this monstrous injustice. Something will happen. You will see. You will see."

"It would have to be a miracle, my dear," Elza said dully.

"God has accomplished greater miracles before this," Rosemary retorted firmly.

Elza smiled. She, poor dear, obviously did not believe in miracles.

After a moment or two she said:

"By the way, I quite forgot to tell you-so stupid of me-this morning, while you were resting there came a telephone message for you from Lord Tarkington."

"From Jasper?"

"He said he was coming some time in the afternoon."

"Where was he speaking from?"

"I am not quite sure, and, stupidly enough, I did not ask. When I understood that it was Lord Tarkington speaking I asked if I should send the carriage to meet him at Cluj. But all I heard in reply was: 'No, no,' and then we were cut off. These telephone people are so tiresome, they cut one off sometimes in the middle of a conversation. I am so glad, darling," Elza continued gently, "that Lord Tarkington is coming back. For your sake," she added, "and also mine."

After that she rose and gave Rosemary a final kiss.

"I have one or two little things to see to before lunch," she said, "but I understood from Lord Tarkington that he would not be over before the afternoon."

And she went off with her bunch of keys jingling in her hand, outwardly quite serene, and presently Rosemary could hear her calling to the servants, giving orders, scolding for something left undone. She was still wonderful, even though the elasticity had gone out of her step; and her back was bent like an old woman's, her voice had lost its metallic ring, and all the glorious colour had gone out of her hair.

CHAPTER XXVIII

Jasper arrived in the late afternoon, unheeded and unannounced. Elza and Rosemary were in the garden at the time, and he was in the house for over a quarter of an hour before they heard that he had come. Then she and Elza hurried to greet him. He was in the drawing-room waiting patiently. Rosemary thought him looking tired or perhaps travel-stained.

He kissed Elza's hand first, then his wife's, no more. But Rosemary knew her Jasper. He could not have kissed her in front of anyone, and Elza for once did not seem surprised at the cold, formal greeting between husband and wife. She asked a few questions: "Will you have something to eat, dear Lord Tarkington?" and "How did you come?"

Jasper gave the required explanations.

He had jumped out of the train at Apahida, which is the next station before Cluj, to get a drink, and whom should he see in the station restaurant but General Naniescu, who had driven out in his motor on some business or other. Hearing that Jasper was on his way to Kis-Imre, he offered to drive him over. It was a kind offer, as Jasper was sick of the train journey. He had only hand-luggage with him, and this he transferred, together with himself, to Naniescu's motor. And here he was-very glad to be back.

Elza asked him what had become of the luggage, and where the motor was.

Jasper explained that he had put the motor and the chauffeur up at the inn. General Naniescu had only driven in as far as Cluj, and after that had graciously put the motor and chauffeur at his, Tarkington's disposal, not only for the day but for as long as he and Rosemary would care to use it. The chauffeur was bringing the luggage over presently and would give it to Anton.

"The car might be very useful," Jasper went on, turning to his wife, "so I accepted the offer gladly. I thought it kind of old Naniescu."

Of course, he knew nothing of what had occurred, but even so his mention of Naniescu's name hurt Rosemary. She had already read failure in her husband's eyes-complete failure, and all of a sudden she realized how much hope she had built on this mission of Jasper's, and how it had dwelt at the back of her mind whenever she tried to comfort Elza. Now there was nothing left to hope for, nothing to believe in. Even faith appeared shipwrecked in this new tidal-wave of despair.

Rosemary had always found it difficult to extricate herself from Jasper's arms once he held her tight, and this he did a few moments later, when, at Elza's suggestion that Rosemary should see him up to his room, he found himself alone with her. He took her breath away with the suddenness, the almost save strength of his embrace.

"Jasper!" she murmured once or twice. "Jasper! Please!"

"I was so hungry for you, my Rosemary," he said. "Ten days-my God, ten days without your kiss!"

He looked her straight between the eyes and whispered huskily:

"I've been in hell, little one."

Rosemary tried to smile: "But why, my dear? We can't expect to be always, always together, every day for the rest of our natural lives."

"I don't know what you expect from life, little one, but I do know that if you send me away from you again, I should not come out of that hell again alive."

"But I did not send you away, Jasper," she argued, a little impatient with him because of his wild talk. "Your going to Bucharest was entirely your own idea."

"And I have lamentably failed," he muttered with a shrug.

She gave a little gasp that sounded like a sob.

"There was nothing to be done?" she asked.

"Nothing."

"The King?"

"Indifferent. He trusts Naniescu, has confidence in his judgement, and believes in his patriotism and sense of justice."

"Then there is absolutely nothing to be done," she reiterated slowly in a dull dream-voice.

She was keying herself up to tell him all that had happened in the past four-and-twenty hours. But she was so tired, almost on the verge of breaking down. She did not think that she would have the strength to go through with the long tale of hope and despair. But Jasper made her sit down on the sofa and arranged a couple of cushions round her head. Then he sat down on a low chair beside her.

"Now tell me, little one," he said quietly.

"Why, Jasper," she exclaimed, "how did you guess that there was anything to tell?"

"Don't I know every line of your adorable face," he retorted, "every flicker almost of your eyelid? Before I touched your hand I knew that something was amiss. After that I was sure."

"Dear," she murmured, and nestled her hand in his. Wasn't Jasper wonderful too? With his marvellous understanding and that utterly selfless love for her, who, alas! gave so little in return. He bent his head and pressed his lips upon her wrist.

"You guessed right," she said. "Something is very much amiss."

Then she told him everything. He listened to the whole tale without a comment, and even after she had finished speaking he sat in silence with her hand held between his own, only bending his head now and again in order to kiss her wrist.

"There's nothing to be done!" she reiterated, with a pitiable little catch in her voice.

And after awhile he said quite quietly and deliberately:

"The only thing to be done, my dear, is to comply with Naniescu's wish."

But against this she at once exclaimed, hot with indignation, and he went on with a sigh: "I know, I know. You are such a sweet, enthusiastic creature, and you have embraced the cause of these good people whole-heartedly, injudiciously. I don't want to influence you, of course—"

"You promised me that you would not," she retorted.

"I know! I know! You would not be the adorable creature that you are if you were not unreasonable sometimes. But-I put it to you-what harm would you do in writing the articles that Naniescu wants?"

This question roused Rosemary's indignation once more.

"How can you ask?" she queried. "To begin with I should alienate from these wretched people over here all the sympathy which Philip Imrey's articles have aroused for them abroad. Never again after that could any friend raise a voice on their behalf. Naniescu or his kind would have a free hand. He knows that well enough. Not only he, but all the waverers, all the selfish and the indifferent could in the future point to The Times and say: 'Hardship! Nonsense! Why, here was an independent lady journalist-and a woman at that-with every opportunity for getting at the truth, and she writes at full length to tell the entire world that the administration in Transylvania is a model of equity and benevolence.' And mothers like Elza would cry in vain because their sons had been torn from them, families would be sent into exile, fathers, brothers murdered, oppression, confiscation, outrage would go unpunished, all because one woman had been too great a coward to smother sentiment under the mantle of justice."

Jasper had not uttered a word, hardly made a sign, while Rosemary spoke her impassioned tirade. Only from time to time his dark eyes flashed with a glance of admiration on his beautiful wife, who, with flaming cheeks and slightly dishevelled hair, looked perhaps more desirable in her indignation than she had ever done in repose.

When she paused for want of breath he slowly shook his head.

"And do you really think, my darling," he said softly, "that you can permanently influence English and American opinion by a few newspaper articles, even if these are written by a well-known person like yourself? Dear heart, in order to do that you would have to go at your subject hammer and tongs, never allow one article to be forgotten before you write another; you must be at your subject all the time if you want to create an impression-hammer away at the newspaper-reading public until its stupid wooden head is saturated with the stuff you give it. Naniescu thinks a great deal of these articles which he wants you to write. Well, in my opinion their effect would last just one week after the last of them has appeared. After that some philanthropist or other will have his say on the maladministration of Transylvania, and you are not bound to refute that again, are you? But in the meanwhile Philip and Anna will be comfortably out of the country, and even Elza and Maurus will have settled down somewhere in Hungary to await better times; you will have saved the lives of two young things whom you love, and spared these good people here a terrible sorrow."

While Jasper spoke Rosemary could not do anything but stare at him. His sophistry amazed her. That there was a modicum of common sense in his argument was not to be gainsaid, but that the suggestion of such bargaining with truth and honour should come from Jasper, her husband, horrified Rosemary and revolted her. And men often accused women of a feeble sense of honour! From the first Rosemary had turned away from Naniescu's proposal as from something unclean. She had never dwelt on it, not for a moment. Even this morning, when first she felt herself sinking into an abyss of despair, she had not dwelt on that. But Jasper had not only dwelt on it; he had weighed its possibilities, the "for" and "against" which, with unanswerable logic and not a little sarcasm, he had just put before her. And even now, when she could not keep the look of horror out of her eyes, he only smiled, quite kindly and indulgently, as if she were just an obstinate child who had to be coaxed into reason; and when indignation kept her dumb he patted her hand and said gently:

"You will think over it, I am sure!" Then he rose and started pacing up and down the room, as was his custom when he was irritated or worried, with his head thrust forward and his hands clasped behind his back.

"You will think over it," he murmured again.

"Never!" she retorted hotly.

"You have another fifteen days before you."

"Never!" she reiterated firmly.

He looked at her for a moment or two with an indefinable smile on his lean, dark face, then he shrugged his shoulders.

"How much longer can you stand the mother's tears," he asked, "and the father's despair?"

"Elza, if she knew," Rosemary rejoined, with an obstinate toss of her head, "would be the first to wish me to stand firm."

"Try her!" Jasper retorted laconically. Then as Rosemary, reproachful, indignant, made no attempt to reply, he went on with harsh insistence: "Have you tried her? Does she know that the life of her son is entirely and absolutely in your hands?"

Rosemary shook her head.

"No!" she murmured.

Jasper gave a harsh laugh. "Then," he said, "I can only repeat what I said just now. Go and tell Elza everything, the see if her arguments will be different form mine!"

"Jasper!" Rosemary exclaimed, flushed with bitterness and resentment.

He paused in his restless walk, looked at her for a moment or two, and then resumed his seat beside her. For an instant it seemed as if he wanted to take her hand, or put his arms round her, but whether she divined this wish or no, certain it is that she made a slight movement, a drawing back away from him. A curious flash, like a veritable volcano of hidden fires, shot through the man's deep, dark eyes, and, as if to control his own movements, he clasped his hands tightly together between his knees. Strangely enough, when he next spoke his voice was full of tenderness and almost of humility.

"I am sorry, dear," he said gently, "if I hurt you. God knows that I would rather be broken to pieces on a rack than do that. But things have come to a pass," he went on more harshly, "where my duty-and my right-as your natural friend and protector command me to get you out of this impasse before all this damnable business has affected your health, or, God help us! clouded your brain."

"The impasse, as you very justly call it, Jasper," she riposted, "will not cloud my brain, so long as you do not seek to make right seem wrong and wrong right."

Then suddenly he dropped on one knee close beside her; before she could prevent him his two hands had closed upon hers, and he looked up into her face with a glance full of love and entreaty, whilst every tone of harshness went out of his voice.

"But child, child," he urged, "don't you see, can't you understand, that it is you who make right seem wrong? What good will you do, by letting those two wretched young idiots suffer the extreme penalty for their folly? Will you ever afterwards know one moment's peace? Won't you for ever be haunted by the ghosts of those whom you could so easily have saved? Won't your ears ring for ever with the whole-hearted curses of these wretched people, who will look upon you as the murderer of their son? And, honestly, my dear, your articles in The Times won't do more than flatter the vanity of Naniescu. Those people in England and America who have really studied the question won't think any the better of Roumanian rule or misrule in Transylvania because a lady journalist-eminent, I grant you-chooses to tell them that everything is for the best in the best possible occupied world. Think of all those articles in The Times on the subject of the French occupation in the Ruhr and their misrule in the Palatinate-did it prevent the very readers of that same paper from joining the League of the Friends of France and proclaiming at the top of their voices their belief in the unselfish aims of M. Poincaré? You attach too much importance to the Press, my dearest. Roumania and Transylvania are very, very far away from Clapham and Ealing. People don't trouble their heads much what goes on there. A few do, but they are the ones who will stick to their opinions whatever you may say."

Unable to free them, Rosemary had yielded her hands passively to Jasper's clasp. She lay back with her head resting upon the cushions, her eyes obstinately evading his glance and fixed upon the ceiling, as if vainly seeking up there for some hidden writing that in a few terse words would tell her what to do. Jasper thus holding her captive by her hands made her feel like an imprisoned soul bruising itself against the bars of an unseen cage. She felt fettered, compelled, unable to see, to visualize that rigid code of honour which had ruled her actions until now. Jasper had talked at great length; she had never heard him talk so long and so earnestly and with such unanswerable logic. And Rosemary, who up to this hour had seen her line of action before her, crystal-clear, was suddenly assailed with doubts, more torturing than any mental agony which she had suffered before. Doubt-awful, hideous, torturing doubt. How could she fight that sinister monster "compromise" if the one man whom she could trust tilted on its side? She had never dreamed of such a possibility. And now, suddenly, Jasper had made such a thing possible-worse, imperative!

Rosemary felt her eyes filling with tears. She was so tired and could not argue. She dreaded argument lest she should give in. It was all so utterly, utterly hopeless. Jasper was out of sympathy with her, and Peter—Peter—

She must unconsciously have murmured the name, for all of a sudden Jasper jumped to his feet with a loud curse.

"If you mention that devils' name—" he began. Then once more he started on his restless pacing, with lips firmly set almost as if he were afraid that words would come tumbling out of them against his will.

"Jasper!" Rosemary exclaimed, "why do you hate Peter so?"

"Hate him?" Jasper retorted harshly. "Does one hate a snake-or a worm?"

"That is unjust," she riposted, "and untrue. You forced a promise from me not to confide in Peter. But I wish to God I had spoken to him, asked for his help. Peter half belongs to these people; he would have helped us if he had known."

But Jasper only threw his head back and broke into a harsh, sardonic laugh:

"Peter?" he exclaimed. "Peter Blakeney help you? Heavens above! Don't you know, child," he went on, and once more came and sat down beside her, "that Peter Blakeney is nothing but a paid spy of the Roumanian Government? I warned you; I told you. You remember that day, when you did not even know that he was in Transylvania, he was in Cluj in touch with Naniescu. I warned you then as much as I dared. I could not say much because-because—" He paused, perhaps because he had felt Rosemary's eyes fixed upon him with a curious, challenging look. A second or two later he went on coldly: "And the denunciation of Anna and Philip? How did it come about? Who knew of their folly except you and Peter Blakeney? And what about last night? I warned you not to confide in Peter, not to speak with him of the whole thing while I was away. Are you quite sure, quite, quite sure that Peter knew nothing of the plan? Are you quite sure that he—"

"Jasper! Stop!" Rosemary cried; and with a great effort she pushed Jasper away from her and rose to her feet. She wanted above all to get away from him. She would not listen. She would not hear, because-because every word that Jasper spoke was a dart that hit straight at her heart, and every dart was marked with the word "Truth." All that Jasper said she had heard whispered about her by unseen demons who had tortured her for days with these horrible suspicions. She had rejected them, fought against them with all her might; but no sooner had she silenced one tempter than another took his place and whispered, whispered awful words that, strung together, became a fearful, and irrefutable indictment against Peter. But this, she would not admit; not now, not before anyone, not even before Jasper.

"I won't believe it," she said firmly. "I have known Peter all my life, and what you suggest is monstrous. There have been strange coincidences, I admit, but—"

"Strange," Jasper broke in with a sneer. "You are right there, little one. It is a strange coincidence, shall we say, that has made Peter Blakeney the new owner of this house."

"Whatever to do you mean?"

"That Peter Blakeney has bought an option on the château and property of Kis-Imre from the Roumanian Government."

Rosemary frowned in bewilderment.

"Jasper," she said, "will you please tell me clearly what you do mean?"

"I have told you, dear heart, as clearly as I could. But perhaps you have not realized that if Philip and Anna are brought before a military tribunal and convicted of treason against the State, these estates, together with the château, will be confiscated. It will then be sold for the benefit of the State and the owners will be expelled from the country."

Rosemary felt herself shuddering. "No," she said slowly; "I had not realized that."

"I am afraid that it is so. And in the meanwhile, some who are in the know have already cast covetous eyes on this admirable château and beautiful park and garden, and our friend Naniescu has hit on the happy idea of selling the option of them to the highest bidder. And it seems that Peter Blakeney was the lucky man. He has paid a few hundred thousand leis for a first option on Kis-Imre and its dependencies, should it come in the market after the conviction and presumably the death of his cousins for treason against the State."

"Who told you all that?" Rosemary queried coldly.

"Our friend Naniescu."

"And you believed it?"

"I could not help believing; Naniescu showed me the contract for the option. It was signed 'Peter Blakeney'."

"If Peter has done that," Rosemary went on slowly, "it is because he wants to secure the place ultimately for Elza."

Jasper smiled tenderly. "You are a loyal friend, sweetheart," he said.

"The accusation is so monstrous," Rosemary retorted, "it defeats its own ends."

"I wish I could think so," he rejoined with a sigh. "Unfortunately, ever since Peter's arrival in Cluj I have seen nothing but one calamity after another fall upon these wretched people here. I only wish I had your belief in coincidences. I only wish I could explain satisfactorily to myself how those two children, how Elza, Maurus, all of us, have come to this terrible pass, at the end of which there is nothing but chaos. But there," he went on with his usual gentleness and patience, "I won't worry you any longer. I have said my say. I have put my case before you. Perhaps I look at it too much from a selfish point of view. I am heart-broken to see you so wretched, and feel like hitting out right and left to set you free from this awful impasse. So now, sweetheart, try and forgive me, and think over it all from my point of view a little. The people here are nothing to me, you are everything. All the world and more. Even Heaven would be nothing to me without you, and this place is a hell when you are not here."

Rosemary was standing close by the open window. The sky was grey. Great banks of cloud rose and tumbled about the mountain tops. The pine trees on the hill-side appeared like ghostly sentinels standing at attention in the mist. The heat was oppressive. From far away came the dull rumble of distant thunder. The tuberoses beneath the window sent a heady, intoxicating scent through the storm-laden air. Rosemary felt terribly wearied, and for the first time in her life discouraged. She had striven for right, smothered every sentiment for the sake of abstract justice, and in the end right was proclaimed to be wrong, at best a fantasy born of her own vanity. Was Jasper right, after all? He had rather a way of being always right. Anyway, he was English and practical; sentiment had no part in his organization. Even his love, deep as it was, was not sentiment. Rosemary had found this out before now. It was not sentiment-it was elemental passion. But his views of life were built neither on sentiment nor passion. He looked at things straight, as Englishmen of a certain type do, who despise sentiment and whose unanswerable argument is: "Well, it is the right thing to do."

But, heavens above! what was the right thing now? Rosemary felt sick and faint; the heat and the scent of the tuberoses made her head ache and her eyes smart. Jasper was saying something, but she hardly heard him, and she hardly felt his nearness when he took her hand and pressed it against his lips.

CHAPTER XXIX

But a moment or two later a curious thing happened.

Jasper had gone out of the room, and Rosemary, leaning against the window frame, was looking out into the approaching storm. She had not heard what Jasper had said just before he kissed her hand; but her mind must have registered it, must have made a kind of record of it, like that of a gramophone, because now some of his words came back to her quite distinctly through the rumblings of distant thunder. She had not heard him then, but she heard him now quite distinctly-every word.

"I have jotted down a few ideas. You, of course, will put them into your own picturesque language. Just a few notes of what Naniescu would like to see in The Times. I thought it would save you the trouble to think. I don't think that you will find anything glaringly impossible in my suggestions."

Then he had put something down on the table. Memory had registered a kind of swishing sound. And Rosemary, now turning slowly away from the window, caught sight of that something on the table. Half a dozen loose sheets of paper covered with Jasper's clear, minute handwriting. Like a sleep-walker Rosemary went to the table and picked up the sheets. The shades of evening were drawing in, and the heavy grey clouds in the sky blotted out the remaining rags of daylight. With the papers in her hand Rosemary went out on the balcony. She had the feeling that while she read she must have the pure, storm-laden air about her. She had not turned away from these notes of Jasper's in horror. She had not closed her ears to the record of his words. She knew quite well what was written on these sheets of paper, and deliberately she sat down and began to read.

The political and economic situation of Transylvania was stated in these brief notes with remarkable lucidity. Jasper's clear, unemotional outlook on the administration of the conquered country was set forth without any imagery or attempt at style. Even the obvious bias in favour of the ruling Government was tempered by sound logic and a certain measure of indulgent toleration for the other side. Rosemary read the notes through twice very carefully. She could hear Jasper's voice in every sentence, feel his presence while she read. Long after she had finished reading she sat there quite still, with the sheets of paper lying on her lap and her hands folded over them. She marvelled whether she was quite sane. Jasper had said at one moment that this terrible impasse might overcloud her brain. Well, perhaps it had done that already, and she could no longer distinguish right from wrong through the clouds.

Evening closed in about her. The garden down below became a blur, through which white, starry flowers blinked up at her, and with their placidity mocked the turmoil which was rending her soul. The thunder-clouds were drawing nearer; they hung like lead over the mountains. The pine trees, like dark sentinels, shivered at times under a sudden gust of wind, and from time to time a pale reflex of distant lightning lit the sky above the valley.

Rosa came presently into the room and turned on the lights; she inquired anxiously whether the gracious lady would not come in, as it was raining already and the storm would be breaking very soon. Then only did Rosemary become conscious that her hair and her dress were wet. Heavy drops, the size of a shilling, were falling, but she had not noticed them before.

She came in and quite mechanically she locked the papers up in her dressing-case. She asked Rosa what the time was, and whether dinner would be at the usual time. Yes, dinner would be at eight o'clock as usual, and it was now past seven. Rosa asked if the gracious lady would like to change her dress.