scoundrel Van Bleit,—the man who was cashiered from the Army for a reason the Colonel had yet to find out. And he intended to find out. He had already started inquiries.

She looked back at him steadily, and her slightly raised eyebrows betokened a faint curiosity. She was fencing with him. They were fighting a duel with wit for their weapons; and if the first advantage had been on his side, the second and greater advantage was to her. The knowledge annoyed him.

“Mr Lawless is to be doubly congratulated,” he said drily. “Many men would envy him his reputation, all men would envy him the privilege of calling himself your kinsman.”

She smiled faintly.

“That is flattery, Colonel Grey,” she answered. “But tell me why men should envy him his reputation. I was not aware that it justified envy.”

“Is there nothing enviable in a reputation for valour?” he asked.

She turned deathly white, and her eyes glittered angrily in her tense face.

“If I do not misunderstand you,” she replied, “that is the meanest speech man ever made.”

He looked, as he felt, wholly nonplussed. There was to come a day when he better understood her then incomprehensible indignation, when he not only understood but sympathised with it; but at the time he was entirely baffled. He could only feel astonishment at her outbreak.

“I fear you do misunderstand me,” he said. “There was nothing unworthy in the speech. I merely conceded to a brave man a brave man’s due. I have heard many tales of his courage. Men call him Grit who remember him by no other name. If there is truth in hearsay, he has earned the nickname.”

His manner was sufficiently earnest to convince her of his sincerity. The swift anger died out of her eyes, leaving them softly pensive, and wistful, like the eyes of a woman who meets Hope on the road of Disillusion, and being unprepared for the meeting, is inclined to doubt that it is Hope that she encounters.

“Grit!” she repeated softly. And added: “I have not been out here long, and I have heard nothing of Mr Lawless for years... I have not heard the nickname before, but—I like it... Why do men call him Grit?”

“Because,” he answered quietly, “they credit him with being without fear. They tell tales of his courage—or, rather, less of his courage than of his absolute fearlessness. He is a man to whom fear is unknown... That is the popular belief.”

“And you do not share it?”

He was not altogether prepared for the question. She sprang it upon him suddenly, as if something in his manner challenged her to the inquiry.

“I have his word for it that he has known terror,” he answered quietly, after a brief hesitation.

“That does not disprove his courage,” she said quickly.

“No,” he allowed. “Courage is fear overcome.”

There was another and longer pause. He ended it with the reluctant admission:

“I am inclined to believe myself that Grit Lawless has earned his nickname.”

“You give your meed of praise grudgingly,” she said. But she smiled while she spoke, and the Colonel was dazzled, as many men had been dazzled before him, by the extraordinary seductiveness of her smile.

It was not until he was back in his bungalow going over the interview, and that part of their talk that had related to Lawless, that it occurred to him her manner had been rather that of a person jealous for a friend’s reputation than of a woman who disapproved of, and disowned, a kinsman. And his old suspicion of her, and of the man whom he had trusted in a difficult and dangerous enterprise, returned with renewed force. It struck him as a highly suspicious circumstance that while Lawless was on visiting terms with the woman he should have given him to understand that the relationship between them was the reverse of friendly. He would have liked to question Lawless on the subject; but it had been agreed between them for the greater success of their plans that it was safer to hold no intercourse. If either wished to communicate with the other it was left to his discretion to select a trustworthy messenger. The occasion scarcely justified, in the Colonel’s opinion, so extreme a measure. If he had enlisted the services of a traitor, it was but another false move of the many that had been made. Trickery could only be mated by trickery. He must keep his own counsel and watch the game...

He remembered, thinking quietly over the evening’s entertainment, how Van Bleit had come forward while he was talking with Mrs Lawless, and ignoring him with pointed insolence, had offered her his arm and led her away on some pretext or another. She had glanced back over her shoulder and given him another of her wonderful dazzling smiles as she left him; and he had uttered the wish then, which now in the lonely silence of his own quarters he repeated:

“I would to God that woman were on our side!”