"Take us the foxes, the little foxes, that spoil the vines" On a warm and sunny May afternoon, some ten months since Yeovil's return from his Siberian wanderings and sickness, Cicely sat at a small table in the open-air restaurant in Hyde Park, finishing her after-luncheon coffee and listening to the meritorious performance of the orchestra.

Opposite her sat Larry Meadowfield, absorbed for the moment in the slow enjoyment of a cigarette, which also was not without its short-lived merits.

Larry was a well-dressed youngster, who was, in Cicely's opinion, distinctly good to look on--an opinion which the boy himself obviously shared.

He had the healthy, well-cared-for appearance of a country-dweller who has been turned into a town dandy without suffering in the process.

His blue- black hair, growing very low down on a broad forehead, was brushed back in a smoothness that gave his head the appearance of a rain-polished sloe; his eyebrows were two dark smudges and his large violet-grey eyes expressed the restful good temper of an animal whose immediate requirements have been satisfied.