“Can you send the soldiers away for a moment?” she begged. “I don’t think that they will be needed.”
Major Thomson gave a brief order and the men left the room. Isabel came a little nearer to the table. She avoided looking at Granet.
“I am very sorry indeed,” she went on, “if anything I have done has caused all this trouble. Captain Granet came down here partly to play golf, partly at my invitation. He was here yesterday afternoon, as my father knows. Before he left—I asked him to come over last night.”
There was a breathless silence. Isabel was standing at the end of the table, her fingers still clasped nervously together, a spot of intense colour in her cheeks. She kept her eyes turned sedulously away from Granet. Sir Meyville gripped her by the shoulder.
“What do you mean, girl?” he demanded harshly. “What do you mean by all this rubbish? Speak out.”
Granet looked up for a moment.
“Don’t,” he begged. “I can clear myself, Miss Worth, if any one is mad enough to have suspicions about me. I should never—”
“The truth may just as well be told,” she interrupted. “There is nothing to be ashamed of. It is hideously dull down here, and the life my father has asked me to lead for the last few months has been intolerable. I never sleep, and I invited Captain Granet to come over here at twelve o’clock last night and take me for a motor ride. I was dressed, meaning to go, and Captain Granet came to fetch me. It turned out to be impossible because of all the new sentries about the place, but that is why Captain Granet was here, and that,” she concluded, turning to Major Thomson, “is why, I suppose, he felt obliged to tell you what was not the truth. It has been done before.”
There was a silence which seemed composed of many elements. Sir Meyville Worth stood with his eyes fixed upon his daughter and an expression of blank, uncomprehending dismay in his features. Granet, a frown upon his forehead, was looking towards the floor. Thomson, with the air of seeing nobody, was studying them all in turn. It was he who spoke first.
“As you justly remark, Miss Worth,” he observed, “this sort of thing has been done before. We will leave it there for the present. Will you come this way with me, if you please, Captain Granet? I won’t trouble you, Miss Worth, or you, Sir Meyville. You might not like what we are going to see.”