CHAPTER XII.
NO SURRENDER Mrs.Forbes, a slim, elegant woman, looked as if she were her daughter's elder sister.

Although driven by hay fever to the seaside regularly at the beginning of the London season, she was far from being a _malade imaginaire_.

She did not go willingly.

Each year she hoped against hope that the annoying ailment would not make itself felt, yet no sooner was the month of May well established than for six or seven weeks she had either to drag her husband and daughter away from the metropolis or live by herself in some South Coast hotel.
She had tried Brighton, whence Mr.Forbes could travel to the city, but soon discovered that the daily train journey was not good for his health.

After that, she insisted on adopting the self-denying ordinance of leaving Evelyn with her father in the town house from the middle of May till the end of June, when all three went to the Highlands.
She, of course, had not the remotest knowledge of the terrors threatening her household; a thunderbolt out of a Summer sky would have astonished her less than the indignities she endured when haled away from Eastbourne in the luxurious car which Wong Li Fu had at his command.
Theydon had been in the house nearly half an hour and was exchanging experiences with Forbes and Handyside--the latter, by virtue of his extraordinary share in the day's adventures, being admitted to the full confidence of the others--when Evelyn brought her mother into the library.
"Here is some one who positively refuses to retire for the night until she has met you, Mr.Theydon," said the girl, radiant with joy and relief, now that the shadow of death had passed, apparently forever, leaving her dear ones unscathed.
Mrs.Forbes, an aristocrat to the finger tips, greeted her guest with marked cordiality.
"I have been living during the past few hours like one of the characters one sees in the fearsome little plays produced on the stage of the Grand Guignol in Paris," she said, gazing at him with frank brown eyes singularly like her daughter's, "but I have contrived to gather one definite impression among the whirl of things, and that is that were it not for Mr.Frank Theydon, my daughter and I would now be in as bad a predicament as two women could possibly face anywhere." "I was lucky enough to be of some little use, but Mr.Handyside is the lion of today's contest," said Theydon.
"I am grateful to both of you, how grateful I can never find words to tell, but Mr.Handyside rivals you in modesty, Mr.Theydon.He assured me that you were the _deus ex machina_, though he obtained the machine itself, and rode sixty miles to rescue me from my dragon.