But--" and she struggled for a moment with a feeling that she ought not to say what she greatly desired to say; that speech would be disloyal.

But the need to speak was too strong within her, her heart too heavily charged with fear.
"I will tell you," she said, and, with a glance towards the open windows of the house, she led Colonel Dewes to a corner of the garden where, upon a grass mound, there was a garden seat.

From this seat one overlooked the garden hedge.

To the left, the little village of Poynings with its grey church and tall tapering spire, lay at the foot of the gap in the Downs where runs the Brighton road.

Behind them the Downs ran like a rampart to right and left, their steep green sides scarred here and there by landslips and showing the white chalk.