"No. But you will be missing your dances."
Joan shook her head. She did not turn back to him, but stood facing the door as she replied; so that he could not see her face.
"I had kept all the dances after supper free. If I am not in the way I would rather wait with you."
"Of course."
He was careful to use the most commonplace tone with the thought that it would steady her. The trouble which this telephone message would finally dispel was clearly not all which distressed her. She needed companionship; her voice broke, as though her heart were breaking too. He saw her raise a wisp of handkerchief to her eyes; and then the telephone bell rang at his side. He was calling at a venture upon the number which Commodore Graham had rung up in the office above the old waterway of the Thames.
"Is that Scotland Yard?" he asked, and he gave the address at which Mario Escobar was to be found. "But he may be gone to-morrow," he added, and hearing a short "That's all right," he rang off.
"Now, if you will get your cloak, we might go back into the garden."
They found their corner of the terrace unoccupied and sat for a while in silence. Hillyard recognised that neither questions nor any conversation at all were required from him, but simply the sympathy of his companionship. He smoked a cigarette while Joan sat by his side.
She stretched out her hand towards the Bishop's Ring, small as a button upon the great shoulder of the Down.
"Do you remember the afternoon when I drove you back from Goodwood?"