Chapter 1. Horace Ventimore Receives A Commission
_ CHAPTER I. HORACE VENTIMORE RECEIVES A COMMISSION
"This day six weeks--just six weeks ago!" Horace Ventimore said, half aloud, to himself, and pulled out his watch. "Half-past twelve--what was I doing at half-past twelve?"
As he sat at the window of his office in Great Cloister Street, Westminster, he made his thoughts travel back to a certain glorious morning in August which now seemed so remote and irrecoverable. At this precise time he was waiting on the balcony of the Hô；tel de la Plage--the sole hostelry of St. Luc-en-Port, the tiny Normandy watering-place upon which, by some happy inspiration, he had lighted during a solitary cycling tour--waiting until She should appear.
He could see the whole scene: the tiny cove, with the violet shadow of the cliff sleeping on the green water； the swell of the waves lazily lapping against the diving-board from which he had plunged half an hour before； he remembered the long sw

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