“Like anything,” Jervaise said, and ducked his head and hunched his shoulders, as if he had suddenly remembered the possible susceptibility of his exposed face.

“Is it so very important?” the soft, clear voice asked, still, I thought, with a faint undercurrent of raillery.

“Really, Miss Banks, it is,” Jervaise implored, risking his delicate face again.

She hesitated a moment and then said, “Very well,” and disappeared, taking this time the dissipated candle with her. I heard her address a minatory remark within the room to “Racket”—most excellently described, I thought; though I discovered later that I had, in imagination, misspelt him, since he owed his name to the fact that his mother had sought her delivery on the bed of a stored tennis-net.

Jervaise and I hurried back to the front door as if we were afraid that Miss Banks might get there first; but she kept us waiting for something like ten minutes before she came downstairs. The silence of that interval was only broken by such nervous staccato comments as “Long time!” “Dressing, presumably,” and occasional throaty sounds of impatience from Jervaise that are beyond the representative scope of typography. I have heard much the same noises proceed from the throat of an unhopeful pig engaged in some minor investigation.

The rain was falling less heavily, and towards the west a pale blur of light was slowly melting its way through the darkness. I noted that spot as marking the probable position of the setting moon. I decided that as soon as this infernal inquisition was over, I would get rid of Jervaise and find some God-given place in which I might wait for the dawn. I knew that there must be any number of such places between the Farm and the Hall. I was peering westward towards the rolling obscurity of hills and woods that were just beginning to bulk out of the gloom, when I heard the click of the door latch.

I should not like to be put in the witness-box and cross-examined by Jervaise as to my reason for entering the house with him that night. All that part of me with which I have any sort of real friendship, wanted quite definitely to stay outside. That would have been the tactful thing to do. There was no reason why I should intrude further on the mystery of Brenda’s disappearance; and as a matter of fact I was no longer very keenly interested in that brilliant and fascinating young woman’s affairs. The plan that I had in mind when the door opened was to say politely to Jervaise, “I’ll wait for you here”—I had a premonition that he would raise no objection to that suggestion—and then when he and Miss Banks were safely inside, I meant to go and find rapture in solitude. The moon was certainly coming out; the dawn was due in three hours or so, and before me were unknown hills and woods. I had no sort of doubt that I should find my rapture. I may add that my plan did not include any further sight of Jervaise, his family, or their visitors, before breakfast next morning.

I had it all clear and settled. I was already thrilling with the first ecstasies of anticipation. But when the door was opened I turned my back on all that magical beauty of the night, and accompanied Jervaise into the house like a scurvy little mongrel with no will of its own.

I can’t account for that queer change of purpose. It was purely spontaneous, due to something quite outside the realm of reason. I was certainly not in love with Anne, then. My only sight of her had left an impression as of an amateur copy of a Rembrandt done in Indian ink with a wet brush. It is true that I had heard her voice like the low thrilling of a nightingale—following a full Handel chorus of corncrakes.

She had evidently spent an active ten minutes while we waited for her. She had done her hair, and she was, so far as I could judge from superficialities, completely dressed. Also she had lighted the lamp in what I took to be the chief sitting-room of the farm.

As a room it deserved attention, but it was not until I had been there for ten minutes or more, that I realised all that the furniture of that room was not. My first observations were solely directed to Miss Banks.

Jervaise had grossly maligned her by saying that she was “frightfully pretty.” No one but a fool would have called her “pretty.” Either she was beautiful or plain. I saw, even then, that if the light of her soul had been quenched, she might appear plain. Her features were good, her complexion, her colouring—she was something between dark and fair—but she did not rely on those things for her beauty. It was the glow of her individuality that was her surpassing charm. She had that supremely feminine vitality which sends a man crazy with worship. You had to adore or dislike her. There was no middle course.

And Jervaise quite obviously adored her. All that tactful confession of his in the park had been a piece of artifice. It had not, however, been framed to deceive me. I do not believe that he considered me worth bothering about. No, those admissions and denials of his had been addressed, without doubt, to a far more important person than myself. They had been in the nature of a remonstrance and assurance spoken to Frank Jervaise by the heir to the estate; which heir was determined with all the force of his ferocious nose and dominant chin to help him, that he would not make a fool of himself for the sake of the daughter of a tenant farmer. I had been nothing more than the register upon which he had tentatively engraved that resolve. But he should have chosen a more stable testament than this avowal made to a whimsically-minded playwright with an absurd weakness for the beauties of a midnight wood.

And if I had been a witness to his oath, I was, now, a witness to his foreswearing.

He began well enough on the note proper to the heir of Jervaise. He had the aplomb to carry that off. He stood on the hearthrug, austere and self-controlled, consciously aristocrat, heir and barrister.

“I’m so sorry, Miss Banks. Almost inexcusable to disturb you at this time of night.” He stopped after that beginning and searched his witness with a stare that ought to have set her trembling.

Anne had sat down and was resting her forearms on the table. She looked up at him with the most charming insouciance when he paused so portentously at the very opening of his address. Her encouraging “yes” was rather in the manner of a child waiting for the promised story.

Jervaise frowned and attempted the dramatic. “My sister, Brenda, has run away,” he said.

“When?”

“This evening at the end of the Cinderella. You knew we were giving a dance?”

“But where to?”

“Oh! Precisely!” Jervaise said.

“But how extraordinary!” replied Miss Banks.

“Is she here?” asked Jervaise. He ought to have snapped that out viciously, and I believe that was his intention. But Anne’s exquisitely innocent, absorbed gaze undid him; and his question had rather the sound of an apology.

“No, certainly not! Why ever should she come here?” Anne said with precisely the right nuance of surprise.

“Is your brother here?”

“No!”

It looks such an absurd little inexpressive word on paper, but Anne made a song of it on two notes, combining astonishment with a sincerity that was absolutely final. If, after that, Jervaise had dared to say, “Are you sure?” I believe I should have kicked him.

How confounded he was, was shown by the change of attitude evident in his next speech.

“It’s horribly awkward,” he said.

“Oh! horribly,” Anne agreed, with a charming sympathy. “What are you going to do?”

“You see, we can’t find your brother, either,” Jervaise tried tactfully.

“I don’t quite see what that’s got to do with Brenda,” Anne remarked with a sweet perplexity.

Apparently Jervaise did not wish to point the connection too abruptly. “We wanted the car,” he said; “and we couldn’t find him anywhere.”

“Oh! he’s almost sure to have gone to sleep up in the woods,” Anne replied. “Arthur’s like that, you know. He sort of got the habit in Canada or somewhere. He often says that sometimes he simply can’t bear to sleep under a roof.”

I had already begun to feel a liking for Anne’s brother, and that speech of hers settled me. I knew that “Arthur” was the right sort—or, at least, my sort. I would have been willing, even then, to swap the whole Jervaise family with the possible exception of Brenda, for this as yet unknown Arthur Banks.

Jervaise’s diplomacy was beginning to run very thin.

“You don’t think it conceivable that Brenda…” he began gloomily.

“That Brenda what?”

“I was going to say…”

“Yes?” She leaned a little forward with an air of expectancy that disguised her definite refusal to end his sentences for him.

“It’s a most difficult situation, Miss Banks,” he said, starting a new line; “and we don’t in the least know what to make of it. What on earth could induce Brenda to run off like this, with no apparent object?”

“But how do you know she really has?” asked Anne. “You haven’t told me anything, yet, have you? I mean, she may have gone out into the Park to get cool after the dance, or into the woods or anything. Why should you imagine that she has—run away?”

I joined in the conversation, then, for the first time. I had not even been introduced to Anne.

“That’s very reasonable, surely, Jervaise,” I said. “And wouldn’t it—I hardly know her, I’ll admit—but wouldn’t it be rather like your sister?”

So far as I was concerned, Anne’s suggestion carried conviction. I was suddenly sure that our suspicions were all a mistake.

Jervaise snubbed me with a brief glance of profoundest contempt. He probably intended that commentary on my interruption to go no further; but his confounded pose of superiority annoyed me to the pitch of exasperation.

“You see, my dear chap,” I continued quickly, “your unfortunate training as a lawyer invariably leads you to suspect a crime; and you overlook the obvious in your perfectly unreasonable and prejudiced search for the incriminating.”

Jervaise’s expression admirably conveyed his complete boredom with me and my speeches.

“You don’t know anything about it,” he said, with a short gesture of final dismissal.

“But, Mr. Jervaise,” Anne put in, “what can you possibly suspect, in this case?”

“He’d suspect anything of anybody for the sake of making a case of it,” I said, addressing Anne. I wanted to make her look at me, but she kept her gaze fixed steadily on Jervaise, as if he were the controller of all destinies.

I accepted my dismissal, then, so far as to keep silence, but I was annoyed, now, with Anne, as well as with Jervaise. “What on earth could she see in the fellow?” I asked myself irritably. I was the more irritated because he had so obviously already forgotten my presence.

“Have you no reason to suspect anything yourself, Miss Banks?” he asked gravely.

“If you’re suggesting that Brenda and Arthur have run away together,” she said, “I’m perfectly, perfectly certain that you’re wrong, Mr. Jervaise.”

“Do you mean that you know for certain that they haven’t?” he returned.

She nodded confidently, and I thought she had perjured herself, until Jervaise with evident relief said, “I’m very glad of that; very. Do you mind telling me how you know?”

“By intuition,” she said, without a trace of raillery in her face or her tone.

I forgave her for ignoring me when she said that. I felt that I could almost forgive Jervaise; he was so deliciously sold.

“But you’ve surely some other grounds for certainty besides—intuition?” he insisted anxiously.

“What other grounds could I possibly have?” Anne asked.

“They haven’t, either of them, confided in you?”

“Confided? What sort of things?”

“That there was, or might be, any—any sort of understanding between them?”

“I know that they have met—occasionally.”

“Lately! Where?”

“Brenda has been having lessons in driving the motor.”

“Oh! yes, I know that. You didn’t mean that they had been meeting here?”

“No, I didn’t mean that,” Anne said definitely. All through that quick alternation of question and answer she had, as it were, surrendered her gaze to him; watching him with a kind of meek submission as if she were ready to do anything she could to help him in his inquiry. And it was very plain to me that Jervaise was flattered and pleased by her attitude. If I had attempted Anne’s method, he would have scowled and brow-beaten me unmercifully, but now he really looked almost pleasant.

“It’s very good of you to help me like this, Miss Banks,” he said, “and I’m very grateful to you. I do apologise, most sincerely for dragging you out of bed at such an unholy hour, but I’m sure you appreciate my—our anxiety.”

“Oh! of course,” she agreed, with a look that I thought horribly sympathetic.

I began to wonder if my first estimate of her—based to a certain extent, perhaps, on Jervaise’s admission that she did not like him—had not been considerably too high. She might, after all, be just an ordinary charming woman, enlivened by a streak of minx, and eager enough to catch the heir of Jervaise if he were available. How low my thought of her must have sunk at that moment! But they were, now, exchanging courtesies with an air that gave to their commonplaces the effect of a flirtation.

I distracted my attention. I couldn’t help hearing what they said, but I could refrain from looking at Anne. She was becoming vivacious, and I found myself strangely disliking her vivacity. It was then that I began to take note of the furnishing of the room which, when I considered it, was so peculiarly not in the manner of the familiar English farm-house. Instead of the plush suite, the glass bell shades, the round centre table, and all the other stuffy misconceptions so firmly established by the civilisation of the nineteenth century, I discovered the authentic marks of the old English æsthetic—whitewashed walls and black oak. And the dresser, the settles, the oblong table, the rush-bottomed chairs, the big chest by the side wall, all looked sturdily genuine; venerably conscious of the boast that they had defied the greedy collector and would continue to elude his most insidious approaches. Here, they were in their proper surroundings. They gave the effect of having carelessly lounged in and settled themselves; they were like the steady group of “regulars” in the parlour of their familiar inn.

I came out of my reflection on the furniture to find that Jervaise was going, at last. He was smiling and effusive, talking quickly about nothing, apologising again for the unseemliness of our visit. Anne was pathetically complacent, accepting and discounting his excuses, and professing her willingness to help in any way she possibly could. “But I really and truly expect you’ll find Brenda safe at home when you get back,” she said, and I felt that she honestly believed that.

“I hope so; I hope so,” Jervaise responded, and then they most unnecessarily shook hands.

I thought that it was time to assert myself above the clatter of their farewells.

“We might add, Miss Banks,” I put in, “that we’ve been making a perfectly absurd fuss about nothing at all. But, no doubt, you’re used to that.”

She looked at me, then, for the first time since I had come into the house; and I saw the impulse to some tart response flicker in her face and die away unexpressed. We stood and stared at one another for a long half-second or so; and when she looked away I fancied that there was something like fear in her evasion. It seemed to me that I saw the true spirit of her in the way her glance refused me as some one with whom she did not care to sport. Her voice, too, dropped, so that I could not catch the murmur of her reply.

We had, indeed, recognised each other in that brief meeting of our eyes. Some kind of challenge had passed between us. I had dared her to drop that disguise of trickery and show herself as she was; and her response had been an admission that she acknowledged not me, but my recognition of her.

How far the fact that I had truly appraised her real worth might influence her, in time, to think gently of me, I could not guess; but I hoped, even a little vaingloriously, that she would respond to our mutual appreciation of truth. I had shown her, I believed, how greatly I admired the spirit she had been at such pains to conceal during that talk in the honest sitting-room of the Home Farm. And I felt that her failure to resent the impertinence of my “No doubt, you’re used to that,” had been due to an understanding of something she and I had in common against the whole solid, stolid, aristocratic family of Jervaise.

Moreover, she gave me what I counted as two more causes for hopefulness before we left the house. The first was her repetition, given, now, with a more vibrating sincerity, of the belief that we should find Brenda safely at home when we got back to the Hall.

“I feel sure you will, Mr. Jervaise,” she said, and the slight pucker of anxiety between her eyebrows was an earnest that even if her belief was a little tremulous, her hope, at least, was unquestionably genuine.

The second sign was the acceptance of a hackneyed commonplace; the proffer of a friendly message through the medium of a cliché which, however false in its general application, offered a short cut to the interpretation of feeling. Racquet who had maintained a well-bred silence from the first moment of his mistress’s reproof, had honoured me with his approval while we sat in the farm-house sitting-room, and sealed the agreement by a friendly thrust of his nose as we said “Goodnight.”

Anne did not look at me as she spoke, but her soft comment, “You are fond of dogs,” seemed to me a full acknowledgment of our recognition of each other’s quality.

I must admit, however, that at two o’clock in the morning one’s sense of values is not altogether normal.