Mr. Bannister himself was standing by his writing table, not far from the same window, turning over some papers in a perfunctory fashion. He was looking so grave that Raoul felt suddenly apprehensive. Had anything gone wrong!—but nothing could!
“I have sent for you, Monsieur des Sablières,” said the Agent, and his voice was not the voice of yesterday, “so that you can in person repeat your explanation of your action in going out of bounds yesterday afternoon.”
Raoul stared at him. “Why should I repeat it, Sir? I have nothing to add or to take away from what I have already told you.”
“Because I should like Sir Francis Mulholland,” said Mr. Bannister, glancing for a second at the back of that gentleman, who had not turned round, “to have an opportunity of hearing it from your own lips. It is only fair.”
“Fair!” repeated Raoul rather stormily. “Fair to whom? And what has Sir Francis to do with the matter—beyond having denounced me to you? I should have thought that even a magistrate might have been satisfied with that!”
“Monsieur des Sablières, I beg of you——”
“Oh, I am not saying that he exceeded his duty. But he certainly exceeds his rights in being here in the capacity of a judge—and I refuse to recognize him as one.”
At that Sir Francis turned round and faced the young Frenchman.
“I am not here, Sir, as it happens, in the capacity of a judge,” he remarked coolly. “I have not the slightest desire to encroach on Mr. Bannister’s province. I am here, as any man might be, in the rôle of a witness.”
“Unnecessary, Sir,” said Raoul sharply. “Mr. Bannister knows that I instantly acknowledged having been for a short space out of bounds yesterday.”
“I did not mean as a witness to that physical fact,” replied Sir Francis imperturbably. “It would certainly be of small use your denying that!”
“Sir Francis means, I am sorry to say,” interposed Bannister, looking more and more distressed, “as a witness to the truth of your explanation of the fact.”
“No, no, Bannister!” Sir Francis gave a short laugh. “As a witness to its falsehood, if you please!” And as Raoul stared at him, momentarily bereft of speech, he addressed him directly. “Now listen, des Sablières, and correct me if I misrepresent what you told Mr. Bannister yesterday. You asserted that at half-past four Miss Forrest passed you at Fawley Bridge, where you were fishing, that immediately afterwards you heard a scream, rushed up the field to the copse, found that a vagabond was attacking her, and beat him off. Is not that what you asserted to Mr. Bannister?”
“It is.”
“Then let me tell you, as I have already told your Agent, that your ‘explanation’ is a tissue of lies. No vagabond or any one else could have attacked Miss Forrest in Fawley Copse at half-past four o’clock, just before I met you, because Miss Forrest was not there to be attacked.”
“Not there—Miss Forrest not there!” stammered Raoul, thinking he had not heard aright.
“Miss Forrest returned from Northover yesterday afternoon by the turnpike road, reaching Mulholland Park at four o’clock. She did not go out again. It is therefore impossible that she should have passed you at the bridge or been in Fawley Copse, and the using of her name in this unwarrantable fashion to cloak whatever you were doing there is very far, let me assure you, from being of assistance to you!”
For the first moment or two Raoul was so staggered that he merely said slowly:
“Who told you that lie—that Miss Forrest returned by the highroad?”
“I had the information from Miss Forrest herself.”
Raoul’s head whirled. “And she . . . when you mentioned the tramp she——”
“Why should I mention the tramp to her? You forget, you told me nothing about one, when I met you coming out of the copse—had not yet invented the story, perhaps.”
“Invented!” cried Raoul hotly. “It is as true as that I am standing here! Mr. Bannister can witness——”
“Mr. Bannister can witness that that was the story you told him yesterday, certainly. But what does that prove?” enquired Sir Francis evenly, and sat down in a chair by the window.
“You see, des Sablières,” said the Agent, with a wrinkled brow, “there is only one person who can prove that you are speaking the truth—though I freely admit that yesterday I thought you were. I mean, of course, Miss Forrest herself. And you hear what she says?”
“I do not for one moment believe that Miss Forrest—” began Raoul, and then stopped. For in a flash he saw that it was perfectly possible she had told that taradiddle about her return by the highroad in order to shield herself from Sir Francis’s jealous expostulations . . . only, surely, she had told it without dreaming of the position she had got him into! And by this time she was gone from Wanfield and would never know it!
“Come,” went on Bannister persuasively, “you cannot stick to that story against the lady’s own testimony, can you? I am not at all anxious to go to extremities with you, des Sablières—won’t you tell me what you were really doing up in the copse?”
“You had better ask the tramp—if he can be found,” answered Raoul defiantly.
“Exactly—if he can be found,” observed Sir Francis, crossing his legs. “I have my own ideas about that tramp. We will come to that presently. For the moment, as Miss Forrest’s future husband, I ask you to withdraw your use of her name.”
“I will do that only at Miss Forrest’s own request,” said Raoul, looking him in the face.
“A safe offer,” commented Sir Francis. “Miss Forrest, as I expect you are well aware, left Wanfield this morning, and does not even know that you have taken the unwarrantable liberty of using it. And could you not,” he continued with the most galling air of distaste, “have cloaked your proceedings by somebody else’s—some village wench’s, if you must be a squire of dames?”
Raoul’s eyes flashed. Mr. Bannister interposed, clutching at this suggestion. “Is it not possible that Monsieur des Sablières was genuinely mistaken in the lady’s identity?” He turned to Raoul. “Might it not have been some other lady, resembling Miss Forrest, whom you defended in the copse?”
“No,” said Raoul stubbornly, “it was Miss Forrest herself and nobody else.” But he could have met these attacks so much better if he had not had to think hard all the time, to try to puzzle out while he spoke what Miss Forrest really had said—what she would wish him to say. Had she really kept silence about the tramp?
“Do not press Monsieur des Sablières unduly, Mr. Bannister,” said Sir Francis with suavity. “Where there was no lady, and no tramp—at least in the form of a tramp—it is putting too great a strain on his powers of invention to call on him to provide another female in distress!”
The taunt went unheeded. Raoul, his eyes following the pattern of Mr. Bannister’s worn carpet, was thinking furiously, while up from the street below floated scraps of an animated conversation between two of his compatriots. The subject seemed to be the price of meat. . . . Was Sir Francis speaking in good faith, or was it conceivable that he was deliberately lying? In either case, if he, Raoul, chose to reveal the fact that Miss Forrest, shortly before the episode, had been neither walking along the turnpike, nor safely ensconced at Mulholland Park, but in his company by the stream, Sir Francis would not have a leg to stand on. And though, in Miss Forrest’s absence, that fact would no doubt be disputed, he had it in his power to prove it beyond question. It was lucky, after all, that Sainte-Suzanne had seen them.
He lifted his head. “What would you say, Mr. Bannister,” he asked crisply, “if I told