loyalty to her brother--would make her conceal the fact of the proposed
assignation from us. Would you call that being 'double-faced'? I
shouldn't."

"Oh! yes; it's all very reasonable," I agreed petulantly. "But how does it
affect the immediate situation? Do you, for instance, expect to find your
sister at home when we get back?"

"I do," assented Jervaise definitely. "I believe that Miss Banks had some
good reason for being so sure that we should find her there."

I am not really pig-headed. I may not give way gracefully to such an
opponent as Jervaise, but I do not stupidly persist in a personal opinion
through sheer obstinacy. And up to Jervaise's last statement, his general
deductions were, I admitted to myself, not only within the bounds of
probability but, also, within distance of affording a tolerable
explanation of Anne's diplomacy during our interview. But--and I secretly
congratulated myself on having exercised a subtler intuition in this one
particular, at least--I did not believe that Anne expected us to find
Brenda at the Hall on our return. I remembered that anxious pucker of the
brow and the pathetic insistence on the belief--or might it not better be
described as a hope?--that Brenda had done nothing final.

"You haven't made a bad case," I conceded; "but I differ as to your last
inference."

"You don't think we shall find Brenda at home?"

"I do not," I replied aggressively.