By next morning the wind had brought rain with it. A south-west drove against the dripping window-panes, and covered the sea with of .  
Jane, rather pale, wrote a neat letter to the Misses Kent, Hermione Street, South Kensington, mentioning that she would be much obliged if they would send her patterns of jumper wool by return. She hesitated, and then underlined the last two words.
 
“I always think big shops do you better,” was Lady Heritage’s comment, and Mr. Ember added, “Do you knit, Miss Renata? I thought you were the only girl in England who didn’t”—to which Jane replied, “I want to learn.”
 
It was after the letter had been posted that she found Henry’s second message, “Hope to see you to-day, Friday.” She could have cried for pure joy.
 
At during the day, the thought occurred to her that Henry was a solid comfort. She wasn’t in love with him, of course, but he was a comfort. She had plenty of time to think, for she spent the entire day by herself. Sir William had gone to town for three or four days. Lady Heritage disappeared into the north wing at eleven o’clock, and very shortly after, Mr. Ember followed her. Neither of them appeared again until dinner-time. Jane went to sleep over a book and awoke refreshed, and with a strong desire for exploration.
 
 
If only last night’s mysterious happenings had taken place anywhere but in the hall. The dark corner from which Raymond had emerged and into which Mr. Ember had vanished drew her like a magnet, but not until every one was in bed and asleep would she dare to search for the hidden door.
 
“If I were just sitting here and reading,” she thought to herself, “probably no one would come into the hall for hours; but if I were to look for a secret passage, all the servants would begin to drift in and out, and the entire neighbourhood would come and call.”
 
When the lights had been turned on, she wandered round, looking at the Luttrell portraits. This, she thought, was safe enough, and if not the rose, it was at least near it. Willoughby Luttrell’s picture hung perhaps five feet from the ground and about half-way between the hall door and the corner. Jane had always noticed it particularly because Henry undoubtedly resembled this eighteenth century uncle.
 
Mr. Willoughby Luttrell had been painted in a Court suit of silver-grey satin. He wore Mechlin and diamond shoe-buckles. He had the air of being convinced that the Court of St. James could boast no brighter , but his face was the face of Henry March, and Henry’s grey eyes looked down at Jane from beneath a Ramillies .
 
 
After an Jane stopped looking at Mr. Luttrell’s eyes, and reflected that the click which she had heard the night before came from a point nearer the corner. She did not dare go near enough to feel the wall, and no amount of staring at the panelling disclosed any clue to the secret.
 
Jane went back to her book.
 
By sunset the rain had ceased to fall, or, rather to be driven against the land. The wind, lightened of its burden of moisture, kept coming inland in great , fresh and soft with the freshness and softness of the spring. The entire sky was thickly covered with clouds which moved continually across its face, swept on by the currents of the upper air, but these clouds were very high up. Any one coming out of an enclosed place into the windy night would have received an impression of extraordinary freedom, movement, and space.
 
Henry March received such an impression as he turned a stone block and came out of the small sheltering cave behind the seat on the headland above Luttrell Marches. At the first of the gale he took off his cap, and stuffed it down into the pocket of the light ulster which he wore, and stood bareheaded, looking out to sea. His eyes showed him blackness and confused motion, and his ears were filled with the strange singing sound of the wind and the endless crash and of the waves against a beach.
 
He stood quite still for a time and then turned his wrist and glanced at the dial of the watch upon it, after which he passed again behind the stone seat and was about to re-enter the blacker shadows when a tall figure emerged.
 
“Have you been here long?” said a voice.
 
“No, I’ve only just come. How are you, Tony?”
 
 
“All right. I didn’t think you’d be down here again so soon. It was touch and go whether I could get here.”
 
“Piggy’s orders,” said Henry. “Look here, Tony, don’t let’s go inside. It’s a topping night, and that passage I’ve just come along smells like a triple extract of vaults— beastly. I don’t suppose our friend Ember is to being out late. He doesn’t strike me as that sort of bird somehow.”
 
“All right,” said Anthony Luttrell. He sat down on the stone seat as he , and Henry followed his example.
 
“Piggy sent you down, did he? What for?”
 
Henry was silent. It seemed like quite a long time before he said:
 
“Tony, who knows about the passages beside you and me?”
 
“No one,” said Anthony shortly.
 
“Uncle James told me when he thought the Boche had done you in. He said then that no one knew except he and I. He drew out a plan of all the passages and made me learn it by heart. When I could draw it with my eyes shut, we burnt every of paper I had touched. I’ve been into the passages exactly three times—once that same week to test my knowledge, again the other day, and to-night. I’ll swear no one saw me go in or come out, and I’ll swear I’ve never breathed a word to a soul.”
 
“Are you rehearsing your ?” inquired Anthony Luttrell, with more than a hint of .
 
“No, I’m not. I want to know who else knows about the passages.”
 
“And I have told you.”
 
“Tony, it is no good. I had my suspicions the other night, but to-night I’ve got proof. The passages have been made use of. Unfortunately there’s no doubt about it at all. I want to know whether you have any idea—hang it all, Tony, you must see what I’m driving at! Wait a minute; don’t go through the roof until you’ve heard what I’ve got to say. You see, I know that Uncle James gave you the plan when you were only sixteen, because he thought he was dying then, and I’ve come down here to ask you whether any one might have seen you coming and going as a boy, or whether ... Tony, did you ever tell any one?”
 
“I thought you said that it was Piggy’s orders that brought you down here.”
 
“Yes, it was,” said Henry.
 
“Am I to gather then that Piggy has suggested these damned impertinent questions?” Mr. Luttrell’s tone was easy to a degree.
 
Henry, on the of losing his temper, rose to his feet, walked half a dozen paces with his hands shoved well down in his pockets, and then walked back again.
 
“Tony, what on earth’s the good of quarrelling?”
 
Anthony Luttrell was leaning back, his head against the back of the stone seat, his long legs stretched out in front of him. He appeared to be watching the race of clouds between the horizon and the zenith. He said something, and the wind took his words away.
 
Henry sat down again.
 
 
“Look here, Tony,” he said, “you’ve not answered my question. Did you ever tell any one? Damn it all, Tony, I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t have to!... Did you ever tell Raymond?”
 
A great swept the headland, another and more violent one followed it, against the cliff, and then dropped suddenly into what, after the , seemed like a silence.
 
“Piggy speaking, or you?” said Anthony Luttrell quite lightly.
 
“Both,” said Henry.
 
“You sound heated, Henry. Now I should have thought that that would have been my rôle. Instead, I merely repeat to you, and you in your turn, of course, repeat to Piggy that I have told no one about ............