assisted me at one time, but--"

Enid slipped into the road. The night was passably light and her
beautiful features were fairly clear to the startled men in the road.

"The girl is here," she said. "What do you want?"

Bell and his companion cried out simultaneously: Bell because he was so
suddenly face to face with one who was very dear to him, David because it
seemed to him that he recognised the voice from the darkness, the voice
of his great adventure. And there was another surprise as he saw Ruth
Gates side by side with the owner of that wonderful voice.

"Enid!" Bell cried, hoarsely. "I did not expect--"

"To confront me like this," the girl said, coldly. "That I quite
understand. What I don't understand is why you intrude your hated
presence here."

Bell shook his handsome head mournfully. He looked strangely downcast and
dejected, and none the less, perhaps, because a fall in crossing the down
had severely wrenched his ankle. But for a belated cab on the Rottingdean
road he would not have been here now.

"As hard and cruel as ever," he said. "Not one word to me, not one word
in my defence. And all the time I am the victim of a vile conspiracy--"

"Conspiracy! Do you call vulgar theft a conspiracy?"

"It was nothing else," David put in, eagerly. "A most extraordinary