When at last Signor Vinciguerra was in France the whole thing seemed ridiculously easy. Mrs. Rylands was astonished to think the affair had ever seemed a challenge to her courage or a defiance of danger. For a day he lay hidden in Philip’s room and no one, who was not in the secret, thought of going there. The next morning he walked out of Casa Terragena with Miss Frant the maid, even as he had walked in, as a nurse. He was now carefully shaved, made up, dressed completely in garments hastily unpicked and resewn to fit him passably, and assisted by glasses. The men were already up the garden with the luggage, for Mrs. Rylands was going to visit her dear friends the Jex-Hiltons at Cannes for a couple of nights. Frant had let out to Bombaccio that her mistress had to see a great British specialist. Nothing to be really anxious about in Mrs. Rylands’ condition but something not quite in order.

It was visitors’ day for the gardens. If anyone observed a nurse who was not Mrs. McManus, well, it was some other nurse. Or there are such things as consultations of nurses. Above waited Parsons the English chauffeur with the best car. Vinciguerra was left in a quiet corner and Frant went on to fuss about the luggage at the gates and send the man back for a thoughtfully forgotten umbrella and a book. Mrs. Rylands, assisted up the garden path by Mrs. McManus, was handed over to Vinciguerra at the trysting place. He produced an excellent falsetto and talked English as he helped his protectress into the car.

There was tension, certainly there was tension, as far as the Italian custom house at the roadside. But the douaniers gave but a glance and motioned the familiar car on with friendly gestures. A lurking Fascist young gentleman, just too late, thought the inspection perfunctory and was for supplementing it. He called out “Alo!” after the car. That was the greatest thrill. Parsons slewed his eye round for orders. He hated foreigners who said “Alo” to him. “Go on,” said and signalled his mistress; “Go on!” said Frant, sitting beside him, and he put his foot down on the accelerator only too gladly.

She glanced back through the oval window at the back of the car. The young Italian gentleman was not pursuing. He had gone back to lecture the douaniers — on thoroughness no doubt.

The French douane was even less trouble. Bows and smiles. Mrs. Rylands, that charming neighbour, was welcome to France.

And this was all! They were purring smoothly along the eastern sea front of Modane. People promenading, people bathing. In bright sunshine, in a free world. It was all over. The danger, the stress.

“I have had to masquerade as a woman,” said Signor Vinciguerra resentfully and took off the glasses which blurred the world for him. “But I am out of prison. I know I look ridiculous, I know —— Dio mio!”

He sobbed. Tears filled his eyes.

“Il suo coraggio,” he said, crushing her hand with both of his. “Non dimentichero mai quel ch’ Ella ha fatto per me. Never. Never.”

“In two hours or less we will be in Cannes,” said Mrs. Rylands, trying to save some of her hand. “Then you shall be a man again. . . . Don’t! Don’t!”

“I should have been beaten. I should have died like a dog.”

He recovered abruptly. “This is absurd,” he said. “Forgive me, dear Lady.”

He was silent but still intensely expressive.

“Don’t you think this view of Cap Martin is perfectly lovely?” said Mrs. Rylands. . . .

Just at that very moment Mrs. McManus and Bombaccio confronted each other in the hall of Casa Terragena.

“But I thought you had gone with the Signora!” said Bombaccio.

“There’s some telegrams in Ventimiglia. We thought of them at the last moment. I’ll want the second car for that. Then I shall go on by train.”

“I could have sent them on.”

“What is that you’ve got in your hand there? a pair of shoes?”

“They were found in the garden,” said Bombaccio. “They were found in a trampled place under a rock beneath the tennis court. And these —affari. Ecco!” Bombaccio held them out; the decorative socks of a man of the world but with a huge hole in one heel. “What can they be? And where are the feet they should have? Surely this is of the traddittore! Il Vinciguerra.”

“Some of him,” reflected Mrs. McManus. “Surely His shoes and socks! Where did you say they found them?”

“Below the tennis court.”

“Very likely if you look about you’ll find some more of him. He must have scattered to avoid them. Unless they found him and tore him to pieces — quietly. But then they’d be all bloody. Will you be ordering the car? For the eleven o’clock train.”

Ahead of her the car with the fugitive ran swift and smooth through Monte Carlo, Beaulieu, Villefranche, Nice, Antibes. At Cannes Mary Jex-Hilton came running down the steps to receive her guest. “You felt dull, you darling, and you came over to us! The sweetest thing in the world to do! Trusting us.”

“I’d a particular reason,” said Mrs. Rylands, descending and embracing. She collected her wits. “Parsons, just help Frant with those bags into the house and upstairs.”

Behind Parsons’ back Frant turned round and grimaced strangely to assure her mistress that the chauffeur should be taken well out of the way.

“This nurse of mine, darling,” said Mrs. Rylands, turning to the quasi-feminine figure that sat now in a ............