Joan knew of it, and she felt soiled and humiliated beyond endurance as she thought upon her association with the spy.
The picture of the room crowded with witnesses, and people whom she knew, and strangers, whilst she gave the evidence which would turn their liking for her into contempt and suspicion would fade away from before her eyes, and the summer afternoon on Duncton Hill glow in its place.
She had bidden Hillyard look at the Weald of Sussex, that he might carry the smell of its soil, the aspect of its blooms and dark woodlands and brown cottages away with him as a treasure to which he could secretly turn like a miser to his gold; and she herself, with them ever before her eyes, had forgotten them altogether.

To sink back into the rank and file--how fine she had thought it, and how little she had heeded it! Now she had got to pay for her heedlessness, and she buried her face in her pillows and lay shivering.
Meanwhile, in the dining-room downstairs, Millie Splay, Sir Chichester and Harry Luttrell gathered about Martin at the table whilst he ate cold beef and drank a pint of champagne.
"I went up to London to see some one on the editorial staff of the _Harpoon_," Martin explained.

"There were two questions I wanted answers for, if I could get them.

You see, according to McKerrel--and you, Sir Chichester, say that he is a capable man--Stella Croyle died at one in the morning." "Yes," Sir Chichester agreed.
"_About_ one," Harry Luttrell corrected, with the exactness of the soldierly mind.
"'About' will do," Martin rejoined.

"For newspapers go to press early nowadays.