"You are sure. It means so much to me to escape—what I have no right to escape, I can hardly believe it."
"I am quite sure," replied Martin Hillyard.
Joan breathed a long, fluttering sigh of relief. She sat up as though a weight had been loosed from her shoulders. The trouble lifted from her face.
"You need not call upon me at all?"
"No."
"I don't want to shirk—any more," she insisted. "I should not hesitate."
"I know that, Joan," he said with a smile. She looked out over the gardens to the great line of hills, dim and pleasant as fairyland in the silver haze of the moonlight. Her eyes travelled eastwards along the ridge and stopped at the clump of Bishop's Ring which marks the crest of Duncton Hill, and the dark fold below where the trees flow down to Graffham.
"You ask me no questions," she said in a low, warm voice. "I am very grateful."
"I ask you one. Where is Mario Escobar to-night?"
"At Midhurst," and she gave him the name of the hotel.