Henry arrived on the following day and was shown straight into Sir William’s study.  
Half an hour later Sir William rang the bell and sent for Lady Heritage. He hardly gave her time to shake hands before he burst out:
 
“I said you must be told. I take all responsibility for your being told. After all, if I am conducting these experiments, something is due to me, though the Government appear to think otherwise. But I take all responsibility; I insist on your being told.”
 
He sat at his littered table, and all the time that he was speaking his hands were lifting and shuffling the papers on it. At his elbow stood a tray with tantalus and glasses and a syphon. Only one glass had been used.
 
“What is it?” said Raymond.
 
Her eyes went from her father to Henry.
 
Sir William’s hand was shaking. Henry wore a look of grave concern.
 
“What is it?” she repeated.
 
“It’s Formula ‘A’”—Sir William’s voice was just a deep growl. “He comes here, and he tells me that Formula ‘A’ has been stolen. I’ve told him to his face, and I tell him again, that it’s a damned impossibility.”
 
The shaking hand fell heavily upon the table and made the glasses ring.
 
“Formula ‘A’?” said Raymond—“stolen? Henry, you can’t mean it?”
 
“I’m afraid I do,” said Henry, at his quietest. “I’m afraid there’s no doubt about it. We have the most indisputable evidence that Formula ‘A’ has been offered to—well, to a foreign power.”
 
The flush upon Sir William’s face deepened alarmingly. Under the bristling grey brows his eyes were hard with anger. He began to speak, broke off, swept his papers to one side, and, taking up the tantalus and the used glass, poured out a third of a glass of whisky. He let a small quantity of soda into it with a vicious jerk, and then sat with the glass between his hands, alternately sipping from it and interjecting sounds of angry protest.
 
“The information is, I’m afraid, correct.”
 
Henry’s tone, though studiously moderate, was extremely firm. “There is undoubtedly a leak, and, in view of Formula ‘B,’ it is vital that the leak should be found and stopped.”
 
He addressed himself to Lady Heritage:
 
“Sir William tells me that all employés correspond with the list in my possession, that none of them leave the enclosure, and that all letters are censored. By the way, who censors them?”
 
“Ember,” growled Sir William.
 
Lady Heritage elaborated the remark.
 
“Mr. Ember—Father’s secretary.”
 
She and Henry were both standing, with the corner of the writing-table between them. She saw inquiry in Henry’s face. He said:
 
 
“Who does leave the premises?”
 
“Father, once in a blue moon, I when I have any shopping to do, and, of course, Mr. Ember.”
 
“And when you go you drive, of course? What I mean is—a chauffeur goes too?”
 
Sir William made a sound between a snort and a laugh; Lady Heritage smiled. Both had the air of being pleased to catch Henry out.
 
“The chauffeur is Lewis, who was your uncle’s coachman here for twenty-five years. Are you going to suggest that he has been selling Formula ‘A’ to a foreign power? I’m afraid you must think again.”
 
“Who is Mr. Ember?”
 
Sir William exploded.
 
“Ember’s my secretary. He’s been my right hand for ten years, and if you’re going to make insinuations about him, you can leave my house and make them elsewhere. Why, damn it all, March!—why not accuse Raymond, or me?”
 
“I don’t accuse any one, sir.”
 
There was a pause, whilst the two men looked at one another. It was Sir William who looked away at last. He drained his glass and got up, pushing his chair so hard that it overturned.
 
“You want to see all the men to check ’em by that infernal list of yours, do you? The sooner the better then; let’s get it over.”
 
 
Later, as the men answered to their names in the long, bare room which had once been the Blue Parlour, Henry was struck with the strangeness of the scene. Here his aunt had loved to sit doing an interminable embroidery of fruits and flowers upon canvas. Here he and Anthony had lain prone before the fire, each with his head in a book and his heels waving aloft. Memories of Fenimore Cooper and Henty filled the place when for a moment he closed his eyes. Then, as they opened, there was the room all bare, the windows barred and uncurtained, the long stretcher tables with their paraphernalia of glass retorts, queer, twisted apparatus, powerful electric appliances, and this row of men answering to their names whilst he checked each from his list.
 
“James Mallaby.” He called the name and glanced from the man who answered it to the paper in his hand. A small photograph was followed by a description: “5 feet 7 inches, grey eyes, mole on chin, fair complexion, sandy hair.” All correct. He passed to the next.
 
“Jacob Moss—5 feet 5 inches, dark complexion, black hair and eyes, no marks....”
 
“George Patterson—5 feet 10 inches, sallow complexion, brown hair and beard, grey on temples, grey eyes, scar....”
 
The man who answered to the name of George Patterson stepped forward. He had the air of being taller than his scheduled height. His beard and hair were unkempt, and the scar set down against him was a red seam that ran from the left temple to the chin, where it lost itself in grizzled hair. He stooped, and walked with a dragging step.
 
Henry, who for the moment was speaking to Sir William, looked at him casually enough. He opened his list, and in turning the page, the papers slipped from his hand and fell. George Patterson picked them up. Henry went on to the next name.
 
Jane had keyed herself up to meeting him at teatime, but neither Henry nor Sir William appeared.
 
 
“Captain March is an extremely conscientious person,” said Lady Heritage. It was not a trait which appeared to commend itself to her. “I should think he must have interviewed the very black-beetles by now. Have you been passed, Jeffrey?”
 
“I don’t know,” said Mr. Ember, “but it hasn’t taken away my appetite for tea.”
 
In fact it had not. It was Raymond who ate nothing.
 
Jane and Henry did not meet until dinner-time. As she dressed, Jane kept looking at herself in the glass. She was pale, and she must not look pale. She took a towel and rubbed her cheeks—that was better. Then a little later, when she looked again, her eyes were far too bright, her face unnaturally flushed.
 
“As if any one was going to look at you at all—idiot!” she said.
 
After this she kept her back to the mirror.
 
In all the books that she had ever read the secretary or companion invariably wore a dinner dress of black silk made, preferably, out of one which had belonged to a grandmother or some even more remote relative. In this garb she outshone all the other women and annexed the affections of at least two of the most eligible men.
 
Renata did not possess a black silk gown.
 
“Thank goodness, for I should look perfectly awful in it,” was Jane’s thought.
 
 
With almost equal distaste she viewed the white muslin sacred to prize-givings and school concerts. Attired in this garment Renata had played the “Sonata Pathétique” amidst the applause of boarders and parents. With this pale blue sash about her waist she had recited “How they brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix.” Jane tied it in a vicious knot. Her only comfort as she went downstairs was that it was impossible to look more like a schoolgirl and less like a conspirator.
 
Sir William and Henry were in the hall—Mr. Ember too, close to the fire as usual.
 
Sir William jerked his head in Jane’s direction and grunted, “Miss Molloy, my daughter’s secretary.” Henry bowed. Jane inclined her head.
 
Next moment they all turned to watch Raymond Heritage come down the stair.
 
She wore black velvet. Her neck and arms were bare. A long rope of pearls fell to her knee.
 
Jane wondered whether the world held another woman so beautiful, then looked quickly at Henry, and the same thought was visible upon Henry’s face.
 
Dinner was not a cheerful meal. Lady Heritage hardly opened her lips. Sir William sat hunched forward over the table; when addressed, the remark had to be repeated before he answered; he drank a good deal.
 
Jane considered that a modest silence became her, and the conversation was sustained with some effect of strain by Captain March and Mr. Ember. They talked fitfully of politics, musical comedy, the weather, and the American Exchange.
 
It was a relief, to Jane at least, when she and Lady Heritage found their way to the drawing-room.
 
 
Henry wondered at their using this large, formal room for so small a party. His aunt, he remembered, had kept it shut up for the most part. The sense of space was, however, grateful to Jane. The small circle of candlelight in the dining-room had seemed to shut them in, forcing an intimacy for which no one of them was prepared.
 
The Yellow Drawing-Room was a very stately apartment. The walls were hung with a Chinese damask which a hundred years had not robbed of its imperial colour. Beneath their pagoda-patterned blue linen covers Jane knew that the chairs and sofas wore a stiff yellow satin like a secret pride. Electric candles in elaborate sconces threw a cold, steady light upon the scene.
 
Lady Heritage sat by the fire, the Revue des Deux Mondes in her hand. Her eyes were on the page and never left it, but she was not reading. In fifteen minutes her glance had not shifted, and the page remained unturned.
 
Then the door opened, and the two younger men came in. Lady Heritage looked up for a moment, and then went back to her Revue. She made no attempt to entertain Captain March, who, for his part, showed some desire to be entertained.
 
“You are using the big rooms, I see. Aunt Mary always said they were too cold. You remember she always sat in the Blue Parlour, or the little oak room at the head of the stair.”
 
Raymond’s lip lifted slightly.
 
“I’m afraid the Blue Parlour would not be very comfortable now,” she said without looking up.
 
 
Henry possessed a persevering nature. He produced, in rapid succession, a remark about the weather, an inquiry as to the productiveness of the kitchen garden, and a comment upon the pleasant warmth of the log fire. The first and last of these efforts elicited no reply at all. To the question about the garden produce Lady Heritage answered that she had no idea.
 
Mr. Ember’s habitual expression of cynicism became a trifle more marked.
 
Jane had the feeling that the pressure in the atmosphere was steadily on the increase.
 
“Won’t you sing something, Raymond,” said Henry. His pleasant ease of manner appeared quite im............