That was far and away the most disconcerting thing that had happened at Amberley within Straker\'s recollection.

It must have been very disagreeable for Philippa.

When, five days ago, he had wondered if he would ever live to see Philippa disconcerted, he had not contemplated anything like this. Neither, he was inclined to think, had Philippa in the beginning. She could have had no idea what she was letting herself in for. That she had let herself in was, to Straker\'s mind, the awful part of it.

As he walked home from the station he called up all his cleverness, all his tact and delicacy, to hide his knowledge of it from Philippa. He tried to make himself forget it, lest by a word or a look she should gather that he knew. He did not want to see her disconcerted.

The short cut to Amberley from the station leads through a side gate into the turning at the bottom of the east walk. Straker, as he rounded the turning, saw Miss Tarrant not five yards off, coming down the walk.

He was not ready for her, and his first instinct, if he could have yielded to it, would have been to fly. That was his delicacy.

He met her with a remark on the beauty of the morning. That was his tact.

He tried to look as if he hadn\'t been to see Furnival off at the station, as if the beauty of the morning sufficiently accounted for his appearance at that early hour. The hour, indeed, was so disgustingly early that he would have half an hour to put through with Philippa before breakfast.

But Miss Tarrant ignored the beauty of the morning. [Pg 137]

"What have you done," she said, "with Mr. Furnival?"

It was Straker who was disconcerted now.

"What have I done with him?"

"Yes. Where is he?"

Straker\'s tact was at a disadvantage, but his delicacy instantly suggested that if Miss Tarrant was not disconcerted it was because she didn\'t know he knew. That made it all right.

"He\'s in the seven-fifty train."

A light leaped in her eyes; the light of defiance and pursuit, the light of the hunter\'s lust frustrated and of the hunter\'s ire.

"You must get him back again," she said.

"I can\'t," said Straker. "He\'s gone on business." (He still used tact with her.) "He had to go."

"He hadn\'t," said she. "That\'s all rubbish."

Her tone trod his scruples down and trampled on them, and Straker felt that tact and delicacy required of him no more. She had given herself away at last; she had let herself in for the whole calamity of his knowledge, and he didn\'t know how she proposed to get out of it this time. And he wasn\'t going to help her. Not he!

They faced each other as they stood there in the narrow walk, and his knowledge challenged her dumbly for a moment. Then he spoke.

"Look here, what do you want him for? Why can\'t you let the poor chap alone?"

"What do you suppose I want him for?"

"I\'ve no business to suppose anything. I don\'t know. But I\'m not going to get him back for you."

Something flitted across her face and shifted the wide gaze of her eyes. Straker went on without remorse. [Pg 138]

"You know perfectly well the state he\'s in, and you know how he got into it."

"Yes. And I know," she said, "what you think of me."

"It\'s more than I do," said Straker.

She smiled subtly, mysteriously, tolerantly, as it were.

"What............