“So you don’t want to marry me?” said Earl Wyverton.

He said it by no means bitterly. There was even the suggestion of a smile
on his clean-shaven face. He looked down at the girl who stood before
him, with eyes that were faintly quizzical. She was bending at the moment
to cut a tall Madonna lily from a sheaf that grew close to the path. At
his quiet words she started and the flower fell.

He stooped and picked it up, considered it for a moment, then slipped it
into the basket that was slung on her arm.

“Don’t be agitated,” he said, gently. “You needn’t take me
seriously–unless you wish.”

She turned a face of piteous entreaty towards him. She was trembling
uncontrollably. “Oh, please, Lord Wyverton,” she said, earnestly,
“please, don’t ask me! Don’t ask me! I–I felt so sure you wouldn’t.”

“Did you?” he said. “Why?”

He looked at her with grave interest. He was a straight, well-made man;
but his kindest friends could not have called him anything but ugly, and
there were a good many who thought him formidable also. Nevertheless,
there was that about him–an honesty and a strength–which made up to a
very large extent for his lack of other attractions.

“Tell me why,” he said.

“Oh, because you are so far above me,” the girl said, with an effort.
“You must remember that. You can’t help it. I have always known that you
were not in earnest.”

“Have you?” said Lord Wyverton, smiling a little. “Have you? You seem to
have rather a high opinion of me, Miss Neville.”

She turned back to her flowers. “There are certain things,” she said, in
a low voice, “that one can’t help knowing.”

“And one of them is that Lord Wyverton is too fond of larking to be
considered seriously at any time?” he questioned.

She did not answer. He stood and watched her speculatively.

“And so you won’t have anything to say to me?” he said at last. “In fact,
you don’t like me?”

She glanced at him with grey eyes that seemed to plead for mercy. “Yes,
I like you,” she said, slowly. “But–”

“Never mind the ‘but,’” said Wyverton, quietly. “Will you marry me?”

She turned fully round again and faced him. He saw that she was very
pale.

“Do you mean it?” she said. “Do you?”

He frowned at her, though his eyes remained quizzical and kindly. “Don’t
be frightened,” he said. “Yes; I am actually in earnest. I want you.”

She stiffened at the words and grew paler still; but she said nothing.

It was Wyverton who broke the silence. There was something about her that
made him uneasy.

“You can send me away at once,” he said, “if you don’t want me. You
needn’t mind my feelings, you know.”

“Send you away!” she said. “I!”

He gave her a sudden, keen look, and held out his hand to her. “Never
mind the rest of the world, Phyllis,” he said, very gravely. “Let them
say what they like, dear. If we want each other, there is no power on
earth that can divide us.”

She drew in her breath sharply as she laid her hand in his.

“And now,” he said, “give me your answer. Will you marry me?”

He felt her hand move convulsively in his own. She was trembling still.

He bent towards her, gently drawing her. “It is ‘Yes,’ Phyllis,” he
whispered. “It must be ‘Yes.’”

And after a moment, falteringly, through white lips, she answered him.

“It is–’Yes.’”

       *       *       *       *       *

“And you accepted him! Oh, Phyllis!”

The younger sister looked at her with eyes of wide astonishment, almost
of reproach. They were two of a family of ten; a country clergyman’s
family that had for its support something under three hundred pounds a
year. Phyllis, the eldest girl, worked for her living as a private
secretary and had only lately returned home for a brief holiday.

Lord Wyverton, who had seen her once or twice in town, had actually
followed her thither to pursue his courtship. She had not believed
herself to be the attraction. She had persistently refused to believe him
to be in earnest until that afternoon, when the unbelievable thing had
actually happened and he had definitely asked her to be his wife. Even
then, sitting alone with her sister in the bedroom they shared, she could
scarcely bring herself to realize what had happened to her.

“Yes,” she said; “I accepted him of course–of course. My dear Molly, how
could I refuse?”

Molly made no reply, but her silence was somehow tragic.

“Think of mother,” the elder girl went on, “and the children. How could I
possibly refuse–even if I wanted?”

“Yes,” said Molly; “I see. But I quite thought you were in love with Jim
Freeman.”

In the silence that followed this blunt speech she turned to look
searchingly at her sister. Molly was just twenty, and she did the entire
work of the household with sturdy goodwill. She possessed beauty that was
unusual. They were a good-looking family, and she was the fairest of them
all. Her eyes were dark and very shrewd, under their straight black
brows; her face was delicate in colouring and outline; her hair was
red-gold and abundant. Moreover, she was clever in a strictly practical
sense. She enjoyed life in spite of straitened circumstances. And she
possessed a serenity of temperament that no amount of adversity ever
seemed to ruffle.

Having obtained the desired glimpse of her sister’s face, she returned
without comment to the very worn stocking that she was repairing.

“I had a talk with Jim Freeman the other day,” she said. “He was driving
the old doctor’s dog-cart and going to see a patient. He offered me a
lift.”

“Oh!” Phyllis’s tone was carefully devoid of interest. She also took up a
stocking from the pile at her sister’s elbow and began to work.

“I asked him how he was getting on,” Molly continued. “He said that Dr.
Finsbury was awfully good to him, and treated him almost like a son. He
asked very particularly after you; and when I told him you were coming
home he said that he should try and manage to come over and see you. But
he is evidently beginning to be rather important, and he can’t get away
very easily. He asked a good many questions about you, and wanted to know
if I thought you were happy and well.”

“I see.” Again the absence of interest in Phyllis’s tone was so marked as
to be almost unnatural.

Molly dismissed the subject with a far better executed air of
indifference.

“And you are really going to marry Earl Wyverton,” she said. “How nice,
Phyl! Did he make love to you?”

There was a distinct pause before Phyllis replied. “No. There was no
need.”

“He didn’t!” ejaculated Molly.

“I didn’t encourage him to,” Phyllis confessed. “He went away directly
after. He said he should come to-morrow and see dad.”

“I suppose he’s frightfully rich?” said Molly, reflectively.

“Enormously, I believe.” A deep red flush rose in Phyllis’s face. She had
begun to tremble again in spite of herself. Molly suddenly dropped her
work and leaned forward.

“Phyl, Phyl,” she said, softly; “shall I tell you what Jim Freeman said
to me that day? He said that very soon he should be able to support a
wife–and I knew quite well what he meant. I told him I was glad–so
glad. Oh, Phyl, darling, when he comes and asks you to go to him, what
will you say?”

Phyllis looked up with quick protest on her lips. She wrung her hands
together with a despairing gesture.

“Molly, Molly,” she gasped, “don’t torture me! How can I help it? How can
I help it? I shall have to send him away.”

“Oh, poor darling!” Molly said. “Poor, poor darling!”

And she gathered her sister into her arms, pressing her close to her
heart with a passionate fondness of which only a few knew her to be
capable. There was only a year between them, and Molly had always been
the leading spirit, protector and comforter by turns.

Even as she soothed and hushed Phyllis into calmness her quick brain was
at work upon the situation. There must be a way of escape somewhere. Of
that she was convinced. There always was a way of escape. But for the
time at least it baffled her. Her own acquaintance with Wyverton was very
slight. She wished ardently that she knew what manner of man he was at
heart.

Upon one point at least she was firmly determined. This monstrous
sacrifice must not take place, even were it to ensure the whole family
welfare. The life they lived was desperately difficult, but Phyllis must
not be allowed to ruin her own life’s happiness and another’s also to
ease the burden.

But what a pity it seemed! What a pity! Why in wonder was Fate so
perverse? Molly thought. Such a brilliant chance offered to herself
would have turned the whole world into a gilded dreamland. For she was
wholly heart-free.

The idea was a fascinating one. It held her fancy strongly. She began to
wonder if he cared very deeply for her sister, or if mere looks had
attracted him.

She had good looks too, she reflected. And she was quick to learn,
adaptable. The thought rushed through her mind like a meteor through
space. He might be willing. He might be kind. He had a look about his
eyes–a quizzical look–that certainly suggested possibilities. But dare
she put it to the test? Dare she actually interfere in the matter?

For the first time in all her vigorous young life Molly found her courage
at so low an ebb that she was by no means sure that she could rely upon
it to carry her through.

She spent the rest of that day in trying to screw herself up to what she
privately termed “the necessary pitch of impudence.”

       *       *       *       *       *

At nine o’clock on the following morning Lord Wyverton, sitting at
breakfast alone in the little coffee-room of the Red Lion, heard a voice
he recognized speak his name in the passage outside.

“Lord Wyverton,” it said, “is he down?”

Lord Wyverton rose and went to the door. He met the landlady just
entering with a basket of eggs in her hand. She dropped him a curtsy.

“It’s Miss Molly from the Vicarage, my lord,” she said.

Molly herself stood in the background. Behind the landlady’s broad back
she also executed a village bob.

“I had to come with the eggs. We supply Mrs. Richards with eggs. And it
seemed unneighbourly to go away without seeing your lordship,” she said.

She looked at him with wonderful dark eyes that met his own with
unreserved directness. He told himself as he shook hands that this girl
was a great beauty and would be a magnificent woman some day.

“I am pleased to see you,” he said, with quiet courtesy. “It was kind of
you to look me up. Will you come into the garden?”

“I haven’t much time to spare,” said Molly. “It’s my cake morning. You
are coming round to the Vicarage, aren’t you? Can’t we walk together?”

“Certainly,” he replied at once, “if you think I shall not be too early a
visitor.”

Molly’s lips parted in a little smile. “We begin our day at six,” she
said.

“What energy!” he commented. “I am only energetic when I am on a
holiday.”

“You’re on business now, then?” queried Molly.

He looked at her keenly as they passed out upon the sunlit road. “I think
you know what my business is,” he said.

She did not respond. “I’ll take you through the fields,” she said. “It’s
a short cut. Don’t you want to smoke?”

There was something in her manner that struck him as not altogether
natural. He pondered over it as he lighted a cigarette.

“They are cutting the grass in the church fields,” said Molly. “Don’t you
hear?”

Through the slumberous summer air came the whir of the machine. It was
June.

“It’s the laziest sound on earth,” said Wyverton.

Molly turned off the road to a stile. “You ought to take a holiday,” she
said, as she mounted it.

He vaulted the railing beside it and gave her his hand. “I’m not
altogether a drone, Miss Neville,” he said.

Molly seated herself on the top bar and surveyed him. “Of course not,”
she said. “You are here on business, aren’t you?”

Wyverton’s extended hand fell to his side. “Now what is it you want to
say to me?” he asked her, quietly.

Molly’s hands were clasped in her lap. They did not tremble, but they
gripped one another rather tightly.

“I want to say a good many things,” she said, after a moment.

Lord Wyverton smiled suddenly. He had meeting brows, but his smile was
reassuring.

“Yes?” he said. “About your sister?”

“Partly,” said Molly. She put up an impatient hand and removed her hat.
Her hair shone gloriously in the sunlight that fell chequered through the
overarching trees.

“I want to talk to you seriously, Lord Wyverton,” she said.

“I am quite serious,” he assured her.

There followed a brief silence. Molly’s eyes travelled beyond him and
rested upon the plodding horses in the hay-field.

“I have heard,” she said at length, “that men and women in your position
don’t always marry for love.”

Wyverton’s brows drew together into a single, hard, uncompromising line.
“I suppose there are such people to be found in every class,” he said.

Molly’s eyes returned from the hay-field and met his look steadily. “I
like you best when you don’t frown,” she said. “I am not trying to insult
you.”

His brows relaxed, but he did not smile. “I am sure of that,” he said,
courteously. “Please continue.”

Molly leaned slightly forward. “I think one should be honest at all
times,” she said, “at whatever cost. Lord Wyverton, Phyllis isn’t in
love with you at all. She cares for Jim Freeman, the doctor’s
assistant–an awfully nice boy; and he cares for her. But, you see, you
are rich, and we are so frightfully poor; and mother is often ill,
chiefly because there isn’t enough to provide her with what she needs.
And so Phyllis felt it would be almost wicked to refuse your offer.
Perhaps you won’t understand, but I hope you will try. If it weren’t for
Jim, I would never have told you. As it is–I have been wondering–”

She broke off abruptly and suddenly covered her face with her two hands
in a stillness so tense that the man beside her marvelled.

He moved close to her. He was rather pale, but by no means discomposed.

“Yes?” he said. “Go on, please. I want you to finish.”

There was authority in his voice, but Molly sat in unbroken silence.

He waited for several moments, then laid a perfectly steady hand on her
knee.

“You have been wondering–” he said.

She did not raise her head. As if under compulsion, she answered him with
her face still hidden.

“I have dared to wonder if–perhaps–you would take me–instead. I–am
not in love with anybody else, and I never would be. If you are in love
with Phyllis, I won’t go on. But if it is just beauty you care for, I am
no worse-looking than she is. And I should do my best to please you.”

The low voice sank. Molly’s habitual self-possession had wholly deserted
her at this critical moment. She was painfully conscious of the quiet
hand on her knee. It seemed to press upon her with a weight that was
almost intolerable.

The silence that followed was terrible to her. She wondered afterwards
how she sat through it.

Then at last he moved and took her by the wrists. “Will you look at me?”
he said.

His voice sent a quiver through her. She had never felt so desperately
scared and ashamed in all her healthy young life. Yet she yielded to the
insistence of his touch and tone, and met the searching scrutiny of his
eyes with all her courage. He was not angry, she saw; nor was he
contemptuous. More than that she could not read. She lowered her eyes
and waited. Her pulses throbbed wildly, but still she kept herself from
trembling.

“Is this a definite offer?” he asked at last.

“Yes,” she answered. Her voice was very low, but it was steady.

He waited a second, and she felt the mastery of the eyes she could not
meet.

“Forgive me,” he said, then; “but are you actually in earnest?”

“Yes,” she said again, and marvelled at her own daring.

His hold tightened upon her wrists. “You are a very brave girl,” he said.

There was a baffling note in his tone, and she glanced up involuntarily.
To her intense relief she saw the quizzical, kindly look in his eyes
again.

“Will you allow me to say,” he said, “that I don’t think you were created
for a consolation prize?”

He spoke somewhat grimly, but his tone was not without humour. Molly sat
quite still in his hold. She had a feeling that she had grossly insulted
him, that she had made it his right to treat her exactly as he chose.

After a moment he set her quietly free.

“I see you are serious,” he said. “If you weren’t–it would be
intolerable. But do you actually expect me to take you at your word?”

She did not hesitate. “I wish you to,” she said.

“You think you would be happy with me?” he pursued. “You know, I am
called eccentric by a good many.”

“You are eccentric,” said Molly, “or you wouldn’t dream of marrying one
of us. As to being happy, it isn’t my nature to be miserable. I don’t
want to be a countess, but I do want to help my people. That in itself
would make me happy.”

“Thank you for telling me the truth,” Wyverton said, gravely. “I believe
I have suspected some of it from the first. And now listen. I asked your
sister to marry me–because I wanted her. But I will spoil no woman’s
life. I will take nothing that does not belong to me. I shall set her
free.”

He paused. Molly was looking at him expectantly. His face softened a
little under her eyes.

“As for you,” he said, “I don’t think you quite realize what you have
offered me–how much of yourself. It is no little thing, Molly. It is all
you have. A woman should not part with that lightly. Still, since you
have offered it to me, I cannot and do not throw it aside. If you are of
the same mind in six months from now, I shall take you at your word. But
you ought to marry for love, child–you ought to marry for love.”

He held out his hand to her abruptly, and Molly, with a burning face,
gave him both her own.

“I can’t think how I did it,” she said, in a low voice. “But I–I am not
sorry.”

“Thank you,” said Lord Wyverton, and he stooped with an odd little smile,
and kissed first one and then the other of the hands he held.

       *       *       *       *       *

No one, save Phyllis, knew of the contract made on that golden morning in
June on the edge of the flowering meadows; and even to Phyllis only the
bare outlines of the interview were vouchsafed.

That she was free, and that Lord Wyverton felt no bitterness over his
disappointment, he himself assured her. He uttered no word of reproach.
He did not so much as hint that she had given him cause for complaint. He
was absolutely composed, even friendly.

He barely mentioned her sister’s interference in the matter, and he
said nothing whatsoever as to her singular method of dealing with the
situation. It was Molly who briefly imparted this action of hers, and
her manner of so doing did not invite criticism.

Thereafter she went back to her multitudinous duties without an apparent
second thought, shouldering her burden with her usual serenity; and no
one imagined for a moment what tumultuous hopes and doubts underlay her
calm exterior.

Lord Wyverton left the place, and the general aspect of things returned
to their usual placidity.

The announcement of the engagement of the vicar’s eldest daughter to Jim
Freeman, the doctor’s assistant in the neighbouring town, created a small
stir among the gossips. It was generally felt that, good fellow as young
Freeman undoubtedly was, pretty Phyllis Neville might have done far
better for herself. A rumour even found credence in some quarters that
she had actually refused the wealthy aristocrat for Jim Freeman’s sake,
but there were not many who held this belief. It implied a foolishness
too sublime.

Discussion died down after Phyllis’s return to her work. It was
understood that her marriage was to take place in the winter. Molly’s
hands were, in consequence, very full, and she had obviously no time to
talk of her sister’s choice. There was only one visitor who ever called
at the Vicarage in anything approaching to state. Her visits usually
occurred about twice a year, and possessed something of the nature of a
Royal favour. This was Lady Caryl, the Lady of the Manor, in whose gift
the living lay.

This lady had always shown a marked preference for the vicar’s second
daughter.

“Mary Neville,” she would remark to her friends, “is severely handicapped
by circumstance, but she will make her mark in spite of it. Her beauty is
extraordinary, and I cannot believe that Providence has destined her for
a farmer’s wife.”

It was on a foggy afternoon at the end of November that Lady Caryl’s
carriage turned in at the Vicarage gates for the second state call of the
year.

Molly received the visitor alone. Her mother was upstairs with a
bronchial attack.

Lady Caryl, handsome, elderly, and aristocratic, entered the shabby
drawing-room with her most gracious air. She sat and talked for a while
upon various casual subjects. Molly poured out the tea and responded with
her usual cheery directness. Lady Caryl did not awe her. Her father was
wont to remark that Molly was impudent as a robin and brave as a lion.

After a slight pause in the conversation Lady Caryl turned from parish
affairs with an abruptness somewhat characteristic of her, but by no
means impetuous.

“Did you ever chance to meet Earl Wyverton, my dear Mary?” she inquired.
“He spent a few days here in the summer.”

“Yes,” said Molly. “He came to see us several times.”

The beautiful colour rose slightly as she replied, but she looked
straight at her questioner with a directness almost boyish.

“Ah!” said Lady Caryl. “I was away from the Manor at the time, or I
should have asked him to stay there. I have always liked him.”

“We like him too,” said Molly, simply.

“He is a gentleman,” rejoined Lady Caryl, with emphasis. “And that makes
his misfortune the more regrettable.”

“Misfortune!” echoed Molly.

She started a little as she uttered the word–so little that none but a
very keen observer would have noticed it.

“Ah!” said Lady Caryl. “You have not heard, I see. I suppose you would
not hear. But it has been the talk of the town. They say he has lost
practically every penny he possessed over some gigantic American
speculation, and that to keep his head above water he will have to sell
or let every inch of land he owns. It is particularly to be regretted, as
he has always taken his responsibilities seriously. Indeed, there are
many who regard his principles as eccentrically fastidious. I am not of
the number, my dear Mary. Like you, I have a high esteem for him, and he
has my most heartfelt sympathy.”

She ceased to speak, and there was a little pause.

“How dreadful!” Molly said then. “It must be far worse to lose a lot of
money than to be poor from the beginning.”

The flush had quite passed from her face. She even looked slightly pale.

Lady Caryl laid down her cup and rose. “That would be so, no doubt,” she
said. “I think I shall try to persuade him to come to us at the end of
the year. And your sister is to be married in January? It will be quite
an event for you all. I am sure you are very busy–even more so than
usual, my dear Mary.”

She made her stately adieu and swept away.

After her departure Molly bore the teacups to the kitchen and washed them
with less than her usual cheery rapidity. And when the day’s work was
done she sat for a long while in her icy bedroom, with the moonlight
flooding all about her, thinking, thinking deeply.

       *       *       *       *       *

It was the eve of Phyllis’s wedding-day, and Molly was hard at work in
the kitchen. The children were all at home, but she had resolutely
turned every one out of this, her own particular domain, that she might
complete her gigantic task of preparation undisturbed. The whole
household were in a state of seething excitement. There were guests in
the house as well, and every room but the kitchen seemed crowded to its
utmost capacity. Molly was busier than she had ever been in her life, and
the whirl of work had nearly swept away even her serenity. She was very
tired, too, though she was scarcely conscious of it. Her hands went from
one task to another with almost mechanical skill.

She was bending over the stove, stirring a delicacy that required her
minute attention when there came a knock on the kitchen door.

She did not even turn her head as she responded to it. “Go away!” she
called. “I can’t talk to anyone.”

There was a pause–a speculative pause–during which Molly bent lower
over her saucepan and concluded that the intruder had departed.

Then she became suddenly aware that the door had opened quietly and
someone had entered. She could not turn her head at the moment.

“Oh, do go away!” she said. “I haven’t a second to spare; and if this
goes wrong I shall be hours longer.”

The kitchen door closed promptly and obligingly, and Molly, with a little
sigh of relief, concentrated her full attention once more upon the matter
in hand.

The last critical phase of the operation arrived, and she lifted the
saucepan from the fire and turned round with it to the table.

In that instant she saw that which so disturbed her equanimity that she
nearly dropped saucepan and contents upon the kitchen floor.

Earl Wyverton was standing with his back against the door, watching her
with eyes that shone quizzically under the meeting brows.

He came forward instantly, and actually took the saucepan out of her
hands.

“Let me,” he said.

Molly let him, being for the moment powerless to do otherwise.

“Now,” he said, “what does one do–pour it into this glass thing? I see.
Don’t watch me, please; I’m nervous.”

Molly uttered a curious little laugh that was not wholly steady.

“How did you come here?” she said.

He did not answer her till he had safely accomplished what he had
undertaken. Then he set down the saucepan and looked at her.

“I am staying with Lady Caryl,” he told her gravely. “I arrived this
afternoon. And I have come here to present a humble offering to your
sister, and to make a suggestion equally humble to you. I arrived here in
this room by means of a process called bribery and corruption. But if you
are too busy to listen to me, I will wait.”

“I can listen,” Molly said.

He had not even shaken hands with her, and she felt strangely uncertain
of herself. She was even conscious of a childish desire to run away.

He took her at her word at once. “Thank you,” he said. “Now, do you
remember a certain conversation that took place between us six months
ago?”

“I remember,” she said.

An odd sense of powerlessness had taken possession of her, and she knew
it had become visible to him, for she saw his face alter.

“I know I’m ugly,” he said, abruptly; “but I’m not frowning, believe me.”

She understood the allusion and laughed rather faintly. “I’m not afraid
of you, Lord Wyverton,” she said.

He smiled at her. “Thank you,” he said. “That’s kind. I’m coming to the
point. There are just two questions I have to ask you, and I’ve done.
First, have they told you that I’m a ruined man?”

Molly’s face became troubled. “Yes,” she said. “Lady Caryl told me. I was
very sorry–for you.”

She uttered the last two words with a conscious effort. He was mastering
her in some subtle fashion, drawing her by some means irresistible. She
felt almost as if some occult force were at work upon her. He did not
thank her for her sympathy. Without comment he passed on to his second
question.

“And are you still disposed to be generous?” he asked her, with a
directness that surpassed her own. “Is your offer–that splendid offer of
yours–still open? Or have you changed your mind? You mustn’t pity me
overmuch. I have enough to live on–enough for two”–he smiled again that
pleasant, sudden smile of his–”if you will do the cooking and polish the
front-door knob.”

“What will you do?” demanded Molly, with a new-found independence of tone
that his light manner made possible.

“I shall clean the boots,” he answered, promptly, “or swab the floors,
or, it may be”–he bent slightly towards her, and she saw a new light in
his eyes as he ended–”it may be, stand by my wife to lift the saucepan
off the fire, or do all her other little jobs when she is tired.”

Again, and more strongly, she felt that he was drawing her, and she knew
that she was going–going into deep waters in which his hand alone could
hold her up. She stood before him silently. Her heart was beating very
fast. The surging of the deep sea was in her ears. It almost frightened
her, though she knew she had no cause to fear.

And then, suddenly, his hands were upon her shoulders and his eyes were
closely searching her face.

“I offer you myself, Molly,” he said, and there was ringing passion in
his voice, though he controlled it. “I loved you from the moment you
offered to marry me. Is not that enough?”

Yes; it was enough. The mastery of it rolled in upon her in a full
flood-tide that no power of reasoning could withstand. She drew one long,
gasping breath–and yielded. The splendour of that moment was greater
than anything she had ever known. Its intensity was almost too vivid
to be borne.

She stretched up her arms to him with a little sob of pure and glad
surrender. There was no hiding what was in her heart. She revealed it to
him without words, but fully, gloriously, convincingly, as she yielded
her lips to his. And she forgot that she had desired to marry him for his
money. She forgot that the family clothes were threadbare and the family
cares almost impossible to cope with. She knew only that better thing
which is greater than poverty or pain or death itself. And, knowing it,
she possessed more than the whole world, and found it enough.

Late that night, when at last Molly lay down to rest with the morrow’s
bride by her side, there came the final revelation of that amazing day.
Neither she nor Wyverton had spoken a word to any of that which was
between them. It was not their hour; or, rather, the time had not arrived
for others to share in it.

But as the two girls clasped one another on that last night of
companionship Phyllis presently spoke his name.

“I actually haven’t told you what Lord Wyverton did, Moll,” she said.
“You would never guess. It was so unexpected, so overwhelming. You know
he came to tea. You were busy and didn’t see him. Jim was there, too. He
came straight up to me and said the kindest things to us both. We were
standing away from the rest. And he put an envelope into my hand and
asked me, with his funny smile, to accept it for an old friend’s sake. He
disappeared mysteriously directly after. And–and–Molly, it was a cheque
for a thousand pounds.”

“Good gracious!” said Molly, sharply.

“Wasn’t it simply amazing?” Phyllis continued. “It nearly took my breath
away. And then Lady Caryl arrived, and I showed it to her. And she said
that the story of his ruin was false, that she thought he himself had
invented it for a special reason that had ceased to exist. And she said
that she thought he was richer now than he had ever been before. Why,
Molly, Molly–what has happened? What is it?”

Molly had suddenly sprung upright in bed. The moonlight was shining on
her beautiful face, and she was smiling tremulously, while her eyes
were wet with tears.

She reached out both her arms with a gesture that was full of an infinite
tenderness.

“Yes,” she said, “yes, I see.” And her glad voice rang and quivered on
that note which Love alone can strike. “It’s true, darling. It’s true.
He is richer now than he ever was before, and I–I have found endless
riches too. For I love him–I love him–I love him! And–he knows it!”

“Molly!” exclaimed her sister in amazement.

Molly did not turn. She was staring into the moonlight with eyes that
saw.

“And nothing else counts in all the world,” she said. “He knows that too,
as we all know it–we all know it–at the bottom of our hearts.”

And with that she laughed–the soft, sweet laugh of Love triumphant–and
lay back again by her sister’s side.

“And the fourth angel poured out his vial upon the sun; and power was
given unto him to scorch men with fire. And men were scorched with great
heat, and blasphemed the name of God, which hath power over these
plagues; and they repented not to give Him glory.”

The droning voice quivered and fell silent. Within the hospital tent,
only the buzz of flies innumerable was audible. Without, there sounded
near at hand the squeak of a sentry’s boots, and in the distance the
clatter of the camp.

The man who lay dying was in a remote and quite detached sense aware of
these things, but his fevered imagination had carried him beyond. He
watched, as it were, the glowing pictures that came and went in his
furnace of pain. These little details were to him but the distant
humming of the spinning-wheel of time from which he was drawing ever
farther and farther away. They did not touch that inner consciousness
with which he saw his visions.

Now and then he turned his head sharply on the pillow, as an alien might
turn at the sound of a familiar voice, but always, after listening
intently, it came back to its old position, and the man’s restless eyes
returned to the crack high up in the tent canvas through which the sun
shone upon him like a piercing eye.

The occupant of the bed next to him watched him furtively, fascinated
but uneasy. He was a young soldier of the simple country type, and the
wild words that came now and again from the fevered lips startled him
uncomfortably. He wished the dying man would cease his mutterings and
let him sleep. But every time the prolonged silence seemed to indicate a
final cessation of the nuisance, the droning voice took up the tale once
more.

“And men were scorched with great heat–and they repented not–repented
not.”

A soft-stepping native orderly moved to the bedside and paused.
Instantly the wandering words were hushed.

“Bring me some water, Sammy,” the same voice said huskily. “If you can’t
take the sun out of the sky, you can give me a drink.”

The native shook his head.

“The doctor will come soon,” he said soothingly. “Have patience.”

Patience! The word had no meaning for him in that inferno of suffering.
He moved his head, that searching spot of sunlight dancing in his eyes,
and cursed deep in his throat the man who kept him waiting.

Barely a minute later the doctor came–a quiet, bronzed man, level-eyed
and strong. He bent over the stricken figure on the bed, and drew the
tumbled covering up a little higher. He had just written “mortally
wounded” of this man on his hospital report, but there was nothing in
his manner to indicate that he had no hope for him.

“Get another pillow,” he said to the native orderly. And to the dying
man: “That will take the sun out of your eyes. I see it is bothering
you.”

“Curse the sun!” the parched lips gasped. “Can’t you give me a drink?”

The eyes of the young soldier in the next bed scanned the doctor’s face
anxiously. He, too, wanted a drink. He thirsted from the depths of his
soul. But he knew there was no water to be had. The supply had been cut
off hours before.

“No,” the doctor said gravely. “I can’t give it you yet. By-and-bye,
perhaps—-”

“By-and-bye!” There was a dreadful sound like laughter in the husky
voice.

The doctor laid a restraining hand on the man’s chest.

“Hush!” he said, in a lower tone. “It’s this sort of thing that shows
what a fellow is made of. All these other poor chaps are children. But
you, Ford, you are grown up, so to speak. I look to you to help me,–to
set the example.”

“Example! Man alive!” A queer light danced like a mocking spirit in
Private Ford’s eyes, and again he laughed–an exceeding bitter laugh.
“I’ve been made an example of all my life,” he said. “I’ve sometimes
thought it was what I was created for. Ah, thanks!” he added in a
different tone, as the doctor raised him on the extra pillow. “You’re a
brick, sir! Sit down a minute, will you? I want to talk to you.”

The doctor complied, his hand on the wounded man’s wrist.

“That’s better,” Ford said. “Keep it there. And stop me if I rave. It’s
a queer little world, isn’t it? I remember you well, but you wouldn’t
know me. You were one of the highfliers, and I was always more or less
of an earthworm. But you’ll remember Rotherby, the captain of the first
eleven? A fine chap–that. He’s dead now, eh?”

“Yes,” the doctor said, “Rotherby’s dead.”

He was looking with an intent scrutiny at the scarred and bandaged face
on the pillow. He had felt from the first that this man was no ordinary
ranker. Yet till that moment it had never occurred to him that they
might have met before.

“I always liked Rotherby,” the husky voice went on. “He was a big swell,
and he didn’t think much of small fry. But you–you and he were friends,
weren’t you?”

“For a time,” the doctor said. “It didn’t last.”

There was regret in his voice–the keen regret of a man who has lost a
thing he valued.

“No; it didn’t last,” Ford agreed. “I remember when you chucked him. Or
was it the other way round? I saw a good deal of him in those days. I
thought him a jolly good fellow, till I found out what a scoundrel he
was. And I had a soft feeling for him even then. You knew he was a
scoundrel, didn’t you?”

“Yes, I knew.”

The doctor spoke reluctantly. The hospital tent, the silent row of
wounded men, the stifling atmosphere, the flies, all were gone from his
inner vision. He was looking with grave, compassionate eyes at the
picture that absorbed the man at his side.

“He was good company, eh?” the restless voice went on. “But he had his
black moments. I didn’t know him so well in the days when you and he
were friends.”

“Nor I,” the doctor said. “But–why do you want to talk of him?”

Again he was searching the face at his side with grave intensity. It did
not seem to him that this man could ever have been of the sort that his
friend Rotherby would have cared to admit to terms of intimacy.
Rotherby–notwithstanding his sins–had been fastidious in many ways.

The answer seemed to make the matter more comprehensible.

“I was with him when he died,” the man said. “It was in just such an
inferno as this. We were alone together, looking for gold in the
Australian desert. We didn’t find it, though it was there, mountains of
it. The water gave out. We tossed for the last drain–and I won. That
was how Rotherby came to die. He hadn’t much to live for, and he was
going to die, anyhow. A queer chap, he was. He and his wife never lived
together after the smash came, and he had to leave the country. Perhaps
you knew?”

“Yes,” the doctor said again, “I knew.”

Ford moved his head restlessly.

“The thought of her used to worry him in the night,” he said. “I’ve
known him lie for hours not sleeping, just staring up at the stars, and
thinking, thinking. I’ve sometimes thought that the worst torture on
earth can’t equal that. You know, after he was dead, they found her
miniature on him–a thing in a gold case, with their names engraved
inside. He used to wear it round his neck like a charm. It was by that
they identified him–that and his signet-ring, and one or two letters.
Scamp though I was, I had the grace not to rob the dead. They sent the
things to his wife. I’ve often wondered what she did with them.”

“I can tell you that,” said the doctor quietly. “She keeps them among
her greatest treasures.”

Ford turned sharply on his pillows, and stifled an exclamation of pain.

“You know her still, then?” he said.

“She is my wife,” the doctor answered.

A long silence followed his words. The wounded soldier lay with closed
eyes and drawn brows. He seemed to be unconscious of everything save
physical pain.

Suddenly he seemed to recover himself, and looked up.

“You,” he said slowly, “you are Montagu Durant, the fellow she was
engaged to before she married Rotherby.”

The doctor bent his head.

“Yes,” he said. “I am Montagu Durant.”

“Rotherby’s friend,” Ford went on. “The chap who stuck to him through
thick and thin–to be betrayed in the end. I know all about you, you
see, though you haven’t placed me yet.”

“No, I can’t place you,” Durant said. “I don’t think we ever knew each
other very well. You will have to tell me who you are.”

“Later–later,” said Ford. “No, you never knew me very well. It was
always you and Rotherby, you and Rotherby. You never looked at any one
else, till that row at the ‘Varsity when he got kicked out. Yes,” with a
sudden, sharp sigh, “I was a ‘Varsity man too. I admired Leonard
Rotherby in those days. Poor old Leo! He knew how to hit a boundary as
well as any fellow! You never forgave him, I suppose, for marrying your
girl?”

There was a pause, and the fevered eyes sought Durant’s face. The answer
came at length very slowly.

“I could have forgiven him,” Durant said, “if he had stuck to her and
made her happy.”

“Ah! There came the rub. But did Rotherby ever stick to anything? It was
a jolly good thing he died–for all concerned. Yet, you know, he cared
for her to the last. Blackguard as he was, he carried her in his heart
right up to his death. I tell you I was with him, and I know.”

There was strong insistence in the man’s words. Durant could feel the
racing pulse leap and quiver under his hand. He leaned forward a little,
looking closely into the drawn face.

“I think you have talked enough,” he said. “Try to get some rest.”

“I haven’t raved,” said Ford, with confidence. “It has done me good to
talk. I can’t help thinking of Leo Rotherby. My brain runs on him. He
wanted to see you–horribly–before he died. I believe he’d have asked
your forgiveness. But you wouldn’t have given it to him, I suppose? You
will never forgive him in your heart?”

Again the answer did not come at once. Durant was frowning a little–the
frown of a man who tries to fathom his own secret impulses.

“I think,” he said at last, “that if I had seen him and he had asked for
it, I should not have refused my forgiveness.”

“No one ever refused Rotherby anything,” said the dying man, with a
curious, half-humorous twist of his mouth under its dark moustache.

“Except yourself,” Durant reminded him, almost involuntarily.

Again the wandering, uneasy eyes sought his. “You mean–that drain of
water,” Ford said, with a total lack of shame or remorse. “Yes, it’s
true Rotherby didn’t have that. But it didn’t make any difference, you
know. He was going to die. And the living come before the dead, eh,
doctor?”

Durant did not quite understand his tone, but he suffered the words to
go unchallenged. He was not there to discuss the higher morality with a
dying man. Moreover, he knew that the bare mention of water was a fiery
torture to him, disguise it as he might.

He sat a little longer, then rose to go. He fancied that there was a
shade less of restlessness about this man, whom he knew to be suffering
what no other man in the tent could have endured in silence.

In response to a sign he stooped to catch a few, low-spoken words.

“By-and-bye,” said Private Ford, with husky self-assurance, “when it’s
dark–or only moonlight–a man will creep out between the lines and
crawl down to the river, to get some water for–the children.”

He was wandering again, Durant saw; and his pity mounted high.

“Perhaps, poor fellow; perhaps,” he answered gently.

As he went away he heard again the droning, unconscious voice:

“And power was given unto him to scorch men with fire. And men were
scorched–with great heat. Eh, Sammy? Is that water you have there?
Quick! Give me–what? There is none? Then why the–why the–” There came
an abrupt pause; then a brief, dry chuckle that was like the crackling
of flame through dead twigs. “Ah, I forgot. I mustn’t curse. I’ve got to
set the example to these children. But, O God, the heat and the flies!”

Durant wondered if after all it had been a kindness to call back the
passing spirit that had begun to forget.

       *       *       *       *       *

Slowly the scorching day wore away, till evening descended in a blaze of
gorgeous colouring upon the desolate African wilderness and the band of
men that had been surrounded and cut off by a wily enemy.

They were expecting relief. Hourly they expected it, but, being hampered
by a score of wounded, it was not possible for them to break through the
thickly populated scrub unassisted. And they had no water.

A stream flowed, brown and sluggish, not more than a hundred yards below
the camp. But that same stream was flanked on the farther side by a
long, black line of thicket that poured forth fire upon any man who
ventured out from behind the great rocks that protected the camp.

It had been attempted again and again, for the needs of the wounded were
desperate. But each effort had been disastrous, and at last an order had
gone forth that no man was to expose himself again to this deadly risk.

So, silent behind their entrenchments, with the hospital tent in their
midst, the British force had to endure the situation, waiting with a
dogged patience for the coming of their comrades who could not be far
away.

Regal to the last, the sun sank away in orange and gold; and night,
burning, majestic, shimmering, spread over a cloudless sky. A full moon
floated up behind dense forest trees, and shed a glimmering radiance
everywhere. The heat did not seem to vary by a breath.

A great restlessness spread like a wave through the hospital tent. Men
waked from troubled slumber, crying aloud like children, piteously,
unreasoningly, for water.

The doctor went from one to another, restraining, soothing, reassuring.
His influence made itself felt, and quiet returned; but it was a quiet
that held no peace; it was the silent gripping of an agony that was
bound to overcome.

Again and again through the crawling hours the bitter protest broke out
afresh, like the crying of souls in torment. One or two became delirious
and had to be forcibly restrained from struggling forth in search of
that which alone could still their torture.

Durant was too fully occupied with these raving patients of his to spare
any attention for the bed in the far corner on which they had laid the
one man whose injuries were mortal. If he thought of the man at all, it
was to reflect that he was probably dead.

But at last a young officer entered the seething tent, and touched him
on the shoulder.

“Can you come outside a moment? You’re wanted,” he said.

Durant turned from a man who was lying exhausted and barely conscious,
took up his case, and followed him out. He did just glance at the bed in
the corner as he went, but he saw no movement there.

His summoner turned upon him abruptly as they emerged.

“Look here,” he said. “There’s a water-bag quite full, waiting for those
poor beggars in there. Better send one of the orderlies for it.”

“Water!” said Durant sharply, as if the news were difficult to believe.
Then, recovering himself: “Tell the sentry, will you? I can’t spare an
orderly.”

The young officer complied, and hurried him on.

“The poor chap is breathing his last,” he said. “You can’t do him any
good, but he wants you.”

“Who is it?” asked the doctor.

“The man who fetched the water–Ford. He was badly wounded when he
started. He crawled every inch of the way on his stomach, and back
again, dragging the bag with him. Heaven knows how he did it! It’s taken
him hours.”

“Ford?” the doctor said incredulously. “Ford? Impossible! How did he get
away?”

“Oh, he crawled through somehow; Heaven only knows how! But he’s done
now, poor beggar–pegging out fast. We got him into shelter, but we
couldn’t do more, he was in such agony.”

The speaker stopped, for Durant had broken into a run. The moonlight
showed him a group of men gathered about a prone figure. They separated
and stood aside as he reached them; and he, kneeling, found in the prone
figure the man who had talked with him in the afternoon of the friend
who had played him false.

He was very far gone, lying in a dreadful twisted heap, his head, with
its bloodstained bandages, resting on his arm. Yet Durant saw that he
still lived, and tried with gentle hands to ease the strain of his
position.

With a sharp gasp, Ford opened his eyes.

“Hullo!” he said. “It’s you, is it? Did they get the water?”

“They have got it by now,” the doctor answered.

“Ah!” The man’s lips twisted in a difficult smile. He struggled bravely
to keep the mortal agony out of his face. “Gave you the slip that time,”
he gasped. “Disobeyed orders, too. But it didn’t matter–except for
example. You must tell them, eh? Dying men have privileges.”

“Tell him he’d have had the V. C. for it,” whispered the officer in
command, over the doctor’s shoulder.

Durant complied, and caught the quick gleam that shot up in the dying
eyes at his words.

“The gods were always behind time–with me,” came the husky whisper. “I
used to think I’d scale Olympus, but–they kicked me down. If–if
there’s any water to spare, when it’s gone round, I–I—-”

He broke off with a rending cough. Some one put a tin cup into the
doctor’s hand, and he held it to the parched lips. Ford drank in great
gulps, and, as he drank, the worst agony passed. His limbs relaxed after
the draught, and he lay quite still, his face to the sky.

After the passage of minutes he spoke again suddenly. His voice was no
longer husky, but clear and strong. His eyes were the eyes of a man who
sees a vision.

“Jove!” he said. “What a princely gathering to see me carry out my bat!
Don’t grin, you fellows. I know it was a fluke–a dashed fine fluke,
too. But it’s what I always meant, after all. There’s good old Monty,
yelling himself hoarse in the pavilion. And his girl–waving. Sweet
girl, too–the best in the world. I might cut him out there. But I
won’t, I won’t! I’m not such a hound as that, though she’s the only
woman in the world, bless her, bless her!”

He stopped. Durant was bending over him, listening eagerly, as one might
listen to the voice of an old, familiar friend, heard again after many
years.

He did not speak. He seemed afraid to dispel the other’s dream. But
after a moment, the man in his arms made a sudden, impulsive movement
towards him. It was almost like a gesture of affection. And their eyes
met.

There followed a brief silence that had in it something of strain. Then
Ford uttered a shaky laugh. The vision had passed.

“So–you see–he had to die–anyhow,” he said. “My love to–your wife,
dear old Monty! Tell her–I’m–awfully–pleased!”

His voice ceased, yet for a moment his lips still seemed to form words.

Durant stooped lower over him, and spoke at last with a sort of urgent
tenderness.

“Leo!” he said. “Leo, old chap!”

But there came no answer save a faint, still smile. The man he called
had passed beyond his reach.

       *       *       *       *       *

Relief came to the beleaguered force at daybreak, and the worst incident
of the campaign ended without disaster. A casualty list, published in
the London papers a few days later, contained an announcement, which
concerned nobody who read it, to the effect that Private Ford, of a West
African Regiment, had succumbed to his wounds.

“And you will come back, Jim? Promise! Promise!”

“Of course, darling–of course! There! Don’t cry! Can’t you see it’s a
chance in a thousand? I’ve never had such a chance before.”

The sound of a woman’s low sobbing was audible in the silence that
followed; and a man who was leaning on the sea-wall above, started and
peered downwards.

He could dimly discern two figures standing in the shadow of a great
breakwater below him. More than that he could not distinguish, for it
was a dark night; but he knew that the man’s arms were about the girl,
and that her face was hidden against him.

Realising himself to be an intruder, he stood up and began to walk away.

He had not gone a dozen yards before the sound of flying feet caught his
attention, and he turned his head. A woman’s light figure was running
behind him along the deserted parade. He waited for her under a
gas-lamp.

She overtook him and fled past him without a pause. He caught a glimpse
of a pale face and fair hair in wild disorder.

Then she was gone again into the night, running swiftly. The darkness
closed about her, and hid her from view.

The man on the parade paused for several seconds, then walked back to
his original resting-place by the sea-wall.

The band on the pier was playing a jaunty selection from a comic opera.
It came in gusts of gaiety. The wash of the sea, as it crept up the
beach, was very mysterious and remote.

Below, on the piled shingle, a man stood alone, staring out over the
darkness, motionless and absorbed.

The watcher above him struck a match at length and kindled a cigarette.
His face was lit up during the operation. It was the face of a man who
had seen a good deal of the world and had not found the experience
particularly refreshing. Yet, as he looked down upon the silent figure
below him, there was more of compassion than cynicism in his eyes. There
was a glint of humour also, like the shrewd half-melancholy humour of a
monkey that possesses the wisdom of all the ages, and can impart none of
it.

Suddenly there was a movement on the shingle. The lonely figure had
turned and flung itself face downwards among the tumbling stones. The
abandonment of the action was very young, and perhaps it was that very
fact that made it so indescribably pathetic. To Lester Cheveril, leaning
on the sea-wall, it appealed as strongly as the crying of a child. He
glanced over his shoulder. The place was deserted. Then he deliberately
dropped his cigarette-case over the wall and exclaimed: “Confound it!”

The prone figure on the shingle rolled over and sat up.

“Hullo!” said Cheveril.

There was a distinct pause before a voice replied: “Hullo! What’s the
matter?”

“I’ve dropped my cigarette-case,” said Cheveril. “Beastly careless of
me!”

Again there was a pause. Then the man below him stumbled to his feet.

“I’ve got a match,” he said. “I’ll see if I can find it.”

“Don’t trouble,” said Cheveril politely. “The steps are close by.”

He walked away at an easy pace and descended to the beach. The flicker
of a match guided him to the searcher. As he drew near, the light went
out, and the young man turned to meet him.

“Here it is,” he said gruffly.

“Many thanks!” said Cheveril. “It’s so confoundedly dark to-night. I
scarcely expected to see it again.”

The other muttered an acknowledgment, and stood prepared to depart.

Cheveril, however, paused in a conversational attitude. He had not
risked his property for nothing.

“A pretty little place, this,” he said. “I suppose you are a visitor
here like myself?”

“I’m leaving to-morrow,” was the somewhat grudging rejoinder.

“I only came this afternoon,” said Cheveril. “Is there anything to see
here?”

“There’s the sea and the lighthouse,” his companion told him
curtly–”nothing else.”

Cheveril smiled faintly to himself in the darkness.

“Try one of these cigarettes,” he said sociably. “I don’t enjoy smoking
alone.”

He was aware, as his unknown friend accepted the offer, that he would
have infinitely preferred to refuse.

“Been here long?” he asked him, as they plunged through the shingle
towards the sand.

“I’ve lived here nearly all my life,” was the reply. And, after a
moment, as if the confidence would not be repressed: “I’m leaving
now–for good.”

“Ah!” said Cheveril sympathetically. “It’s pretty beastly when you come
to turn out. I’ve done it, and I know.”

“It’s infernal,” said the other gloomily, and relapsed into silence.

“Going abroad?” Cheveril ventured presently.

“Yes. Going to the other side of the world.” Surliness had given place
to depression in the boy’s voice. Sympathy, albeit from an unknown
quarter, moved him to confidence. “But it isn’t that I mind,” he said, a
moment later. “I should be ready enough to clear out if it weren’t
for–some one else!”

“A woman, I suppose?” Cheveril said.

He was aware that his companion glanced at him sharply through the
gloom, and knew that he was momentarily suspected of eavesdropping.

Then, with impulsive candour, the answer came:

“Yes; the girl I’m engaged to. She has got to stay behind and
marry–some one else.”

Cheveril’s teeth closed silently upon his lower lip. This, also, was one
of the things he knew.

“You can’t trust her, then?” he said, after a pause.

“Oh, she cares for me–of course!” the boy answered. “But there isn’t a
chance for us. They are all dead against me, and the other fellow will
be on the spot. He hasn’t asked her yet, but he means to. And her people
will simply force her to accept him when he does. Of course they will!
He is Cheveril, the millionaire. You must have heard of him. Every one
has.”

“I know him well,” said Cheveril.

“So do I–by sight,” the boy plunged on recklessly–”an undersized
little animal with a squint.”

“I didn’t know he squinted,” Cheveril remarked into the darkness. “But,
anyhow, they can’t make her marry against her will.”

“Can’t they?” returned the other fiercely. “I don’t know what you call
it, then. They can make her life so positively unbearable that she will
have to give in, if it is only to get away from them. It’s perfectly
fiendish; but they will do it. I know they will do it. She hasn’t a
single friend to stand by her.”

“Except you,” said Cheveril.

They had nearly reached the water. The rush and splash of the waves held
something solemn in their harmonies, like the chords of a splendid
symphony. Cheveril heard the quick, indignant voice at his side like a
cry of unrest breaking through.

“What can I do?” it said. “I have never had a chance till now. I have
just had a berth in India offered to me; but I can’t possibly hope to
support a wife for two years at least. And meanwhile–meanwhile—-”

It stopped there; and a long wave broke with a roar, and rushed up in
gleaming foam almost to their feet. The younger man stepped back; but
Cheveril remained motionless, his face to the swirling water.

Quite suddenly at length he turned, as a man whose mind is made up, and
began to walk back to the dimly lighted parade. He marched straight up
the shingle, as if with a definite purpose in view, and mounted the
rickety iron ladder to the pavement.

His companion followed, too absorbed by his trouble to feel any
curiosity regarding the stranger to whom he had poured it out.

Under a flaring gas-lamp, Cheveril stood still.

“Do you mind telling me your name?” he said abruptly.

That roused the boy slightly. “My name is Willowby,” he answered–”James
Willowby.”

He looked at Cheveril with a dawning wonder, and the latter uttered a
short, grim laugh. The light streamed full upon his face.

“You know me well, don’t you,” he said, “by sight?”

Young Willowby gave a great start and turned crimson. He offered neither
apology nor excuse.

“I like you for that,” Cheveril said, after a moment. “Can you bring
yourself to shake hands?”

There was unmistakable friendliness in his tone, and Willowby responded
to it promptly. He was a sportsman at heart, however he might rail at
circumstance.

As their hands met, he looked up with a queer, mirthless smile.

“I hope you are going to be good to her,” he said.

“I am going to be good to you both,” said Lester Cheveril quietly.

In the silence that followed his words, the band on the pier became
audible on a sudden gust of wind. It was gaily jigging out the tune of
“The Girl I Left Behind Me.”

       *       *       *       *       *

“What a secluded corner, Miss Harford! May I join you?”

Evelyn Harford looked up with a start of dismay. He was the last person
in the world with whom she desired a tete-a-tete; but he was dining at
her father’s house, and she could not well refuse. Reluctantly she laid
aside the paper on her knee.

“I thought you were playing bridge,” she said, in a chilly tone.

“I cried off,” said Cheveril.

He stood looking down at her with shrewd, kindly eyes. But the girl was
too intent upon making her escape to notice his expression.

“Won’t you go to the billiard-room?” she said. “They are playing pool.”

He shook his head.

“I came here expressly to talk to you,” he said.

“Oh!” said Evelyn.

She leaned back in her chair, and tried to appear at her ease; but her
heart was thumping tumultuously. The man was going to propose, she
knew–she knew; and she was not ready for him. She felt that she would
break down ignominiously if he pressed his suit just then.

Cheveril, however, seemed in no hurry. He sat down facing her, and there
followed a pause, during which she felt that he was studying her
attentively.

Growing desperate at length, she looked him in the face, and spoke.

“I am not a very lively companion to-night, Mr. Cheveril,” she said.
“That is why I came away from the rest.”

There was more of appeal in her voice than she intended; and, realising
it, she coloured deeply, and looked away again. He was just the sort of
man to avail himself of a moment’s weakness, she told herself, with
rising agitation. Those shrewd eyes of his missed nothing.

But Cheveril gave no sign of having observed her distress. He maintained
his silence for some seconds longer. Then, somewhat abruptly, he broke
it.

“I didn’t follow you in order to be amused, Miss Harford,” he said. “The
fact is, I have a confession to make to you, and a favour to ask. And I
want you to be good enough to hear me out before you try to answer. May
I count on this?”

The dry query did more to quiet her perturbation than any solicitude.
She was quite convinced that he meant to propose to her, but his absence
of ardour was an immense relief. If he would only be businesslike and
not sentimental, she felt that she could bear it.

“Yes, I will listen,” she said, facing him with more self-possession
than she had been able to muster till that moment. “But I shall want a
fair hearing, too–afterwards.”

A faint smile flickered across Cheveril’s face.

“I shall want to listen to you,” he said. “The confession is this: Last
night I went down to the parade to smoke. It was very dark. I don’t know
exactly what attracted me. I came upon two people saying good-bye on the
beach. One of them–a woman–was crying.”

He paused momentarily. The girl’s face had frozen into set lines of
composure. It looked like a marble mask. Her eyes met his with an
assumption of indifference that scarcely veiled the desperate defiance
behind.

“When does the confession begin?” she asked him, with a faint laugh that
sounded tragic in spite of her.

He leaned forward, scrutinising her with a wisdom that seemed to pierce
every barrier of conventionality and search her very soul.

“It begins now,” he said. “She came up on to the parade immediately
after, and I waited under a lamp to get a glimpse of her. I saw her
face, Miss Harford. I knew her instantly.” The girl’s eyes flickered a
little, and she bit her lip. She was about to speak, but he stopped her
with sudden authority. “No, don’t answer!” he said. “Hear me out. I
waited till she was gone, and then I joined the young fellow on the
beach. He was in the mood for a sympathetic listener, and I drew him
out. He told me practically everything–how he himself was going to
India and had to leave the girl behind, how her people disapproved of
him, and how she was being worked upon by means little short of
persecution to induce her to marry an outsider on the wrong side of
forty, with nothing to recommend him but the size of his banking
account. He added that she had not a single friend to stand by and make
things easier for her. It was that, Miss Harford, that decided me to
take this step. I can’t see a woman driven against her will; anything in
the world sooner than that. And here comes my request. You want a friend
to help you. Let me be that friend. There is a way out of this
difficulty if you will but take it. Since I got you into it, it is only
fair that I should be the one to help you out. This is not a proposal of
marriage, though it may sound like one.”

He ended with a smile that was perfectly friendly and kind.

The rigid look had completely passed from the girl’s face. She was
listening with a curious blend of eagerness and reluctance. Her cheeks
were burning; her eyes like stars.

“I am so thankful to hear you say that,” she said, drawing a deep
breath.

“Shall I go on?” said Cheveril.

She hesitated; and very quietly he held out his hand to her.

“In the capacity of a friend,” he said gravely.

And Evelyn Harford put her hand into his with the confidence of a child.
It was strange to feel her prejudice against this man evaporate at a
touch. It made her oddly unsure of herself. He was the last person in
the world to whom she would have voluntarily turned for help.

“Don’t be startled by what I am going to say,” Cheveril said. “It may
strike you as an eccentric suggestion, but there is nothing in it to
alarm you. Young Willowby tells me that it will take him two years to
make a home for you, and meanwhile your life is to be made a martyrdom
on my account. Will you put your freedom in my hands for that two years?
In other words, will you consider yourself engaged to me for just so
long as his absence lasts? It will save you endless trouble and
discomfort, and harm no one. When Willowby comes back, I shall hand you
over to him, and your happiness will be secured. Think it over, and
don’t be scared. You will find me quite easy to manage. In any case, I
am a friend you can trust, remember, even though I have got the face of
a baboon.”

So, with absolute quietness, he made his proposal; and Evelyn, amazed
and incredulous, heard him out in silence. At his last words she gave a
quick laugh that sounded almost hysterical.

“Oh, don’t,” she said–”don’t! You make me feel so ashamed.”

Cheveril’s face was suddenly quizzical.

“There is nothing to be ashamed of,” he said. “I take all the
responsibility, and it would give me very great pleasure to help you.”

“But I couldn’t do such a thing!” she protested. “I couldn’t!”

“Listen!” said Cheveril. “I am off for a yachting trip in the Pacific in
a week, and I give you my word of honour not to return for nine months,
at least. Will that make it easier for you?”

“I am not thinking of myself,” she told him, with vehemence. “Of course,
it would make everything right for me, so long as Jim knew. But I must
think of you, too. I must—-”

“You needn’t,” Cheveril said gently; “you needn’t. I have asked to be
allowed to stand by you, to have the great privilege of calling myself
your friend in need. I am romantic enough to like to see a love affair
go the right way. It is for my pleasure, if you care to regard it from
that point of view.” He paused, and into his eyes there came a queer,
watchful expression–the look of a man who hazards much, yet holds
himself in check. Then he smiled at her with baffling humour.

“Don’t refuse me my opportunity, Miss Harford,” he said. “I know I am
eccentric, but I assure you I can be a staunch friend to those I like.”

Evelyn had risen, and as he ended he also got to his feet. He knew that
she was studying him with all her woman’s keenness of perception. But
the game was in his hands, and he realised it. He was no longer afraid
of the issue.

“You offer me this out of friendship?” she said at last.

He watched her fingers nervously playing with a bracelet on her wrist.

“Exactly,” he said.

Her eyes met his resolutely.

“Mr. Cheveril,” she said (and though she spoke quietly, it was with an
effort), “I want you, please, to answer just one question. You have been
shown all the cards; but there must–there shall be–fair play, in spite
of it.”

Her voice rang a little. The bracelet suddenly slipped from her hand and
fell to the floor. Cheveril stooped and picked it up. He held it as he
made reply.

“Yes,” he said, “I like fair play, too.”

“Then you will tell me the truth?” she said, holding out her hand for
her property. “I want to know if–if you were really going to ask me to
marry you before this happened?”

He looked at her with raised eyebrows. Then he took the extended hand.

“Of course I was!” he said simply. She drew back a little, but Cheveril
showed no discomfiture. “You see, I’m getting on in life,” he said, in a
patriarchal tone. “No doubt it was rank presumption on my part to
imagine myself in any way suited to you; but I thought it would be nice
to have a young wife to look after me. And you know the proverb about
‘an old man’s darling.’ I believe I rather counted on that.”

Again he looked quizzical; but the girl was not satisfied.

“That’s ridiculous!” she said. “You talk as if you were fifty years
older than you are. It may be funny, but it isn’t strictly honest.”

Cheveril laughed.

“I know what you mean,” he said. “But really I’m not being funny. And I
am telling you the simple truth when I say that all sentimental nonsense
was knocked out of me long ago, when the girl I cared for ran away with
a good-looking beast in the Army. Also, I am quite honest when I assure
you that I would rather be your trusted friend and accomplice than your
rejected suitor. By Jove, I seem to be asking a good deal of you!”

“No, don’t laugh,” she said quickly, almost as if something in his
careless speech had pained her. “We must look at the matter from every
stand-point before–before we take any action. Suppose you really did
want to marry some one? Suppose you fell in love again? What then?”

“What then?” said Cheveril. And, though he was obligingly serious, she
felt that somehow, somewhere, he was tricking her. “I should have to ask
you to release me in that event. But I don’t think it’s very likely that
will happen. I’m not so impressionable as I was.”

She looked at him doubtfully. Obviously he was not in love with her, yet
she was uneasy. She had a curious sense of loss, of disappointment,
which even Jim’s departure had not created in her.

“I don’t feel that I am doing right,” she said finally.

“I am quite unscrupulous,” said Cheveril lightly. “Moreover, there is no
harm to any one in the transaction. Your life is your own. No one else
has the right to order it for you. It seems to me that in this matter
you need to consider yourself alone.”

“And you,” she said, in a troubled tone.

He surprised her an instant later by thrusting a friendly hand through
her arm.

“Come!” he said, smiling down at her. “Let us go and announce the good
news!”

And so she yielded to him, and went.

       *       *       *       *       *

The news of Evelyn Harford’s engagement to Lester Cheveril was no great
surprise to any one. It leaked out through private sources, it being
understood that no public announcement was to be made till the marriage
should be imminent. And as Cheveril had departed in his yacht to the
Pacific very shortly after his proposal, there seemed small likelihood
of the union taking place that year.

Meanwhile, her long battle over, Evelyn prepared herself to enjoy her
hard-earned peace. Her father no longer poured hurricanes of wrath upon
her for her obduracy. Her mother’s bitter reproaches had wholly ceased.
The home atmosphere had become suddenly calm and sunny. The eldest
daughter of the house had done her obvious duty, and the family was no
longer shaken and upset by internal tumult.

But the peace was only on the surface so far as Evelyn was concerned.
Privately, she was less at peace than she had ever been, and that not on
her own account or on Jim Willowby’s. Every letter she received from the
man who had taken her part against himself stirred afresh in her a keen
self-reproach and sense of shame. He wrote to her from every port he
touched, brief, friendly epistles that she might have shown to all the
world, but which she locked away secretly, and read only in solitude.
Her letters to him were even briefer, and she never guessed how Cheveril
cherished those scanty favours.

So through all that summer they kept up the farce. In the autumn Evelyn
went to pay a round of visits at various country-houses, and it was
while staying from home that a letter from Jim Willowby reached her.

He wrote in apparently excellent spirits. He had had an extraordinary
piece of luck, he said, and had been offered a very good post in Burmah.
If she would consent to go out to him, they could be married at once.

That letter Evelyn read during a solitary ramble over a wide Yorkshire
moor, and when she looked up from the boy’s signature her expression was
hunted, even tragic.

Jim had carefully considered ways and means. The thing she had longed
for was within her grasp. All she had ever asked for herself was flung
to her without stint.

But–what had happened to her? she wondered vaguely–she realised it all
fully, completely, yet with no thrill of gladness. Something subtly
potent seemed wound about her heart, holding her back; something that
was stronger far than the thought of Jim was calling to her, crying
aloud across the barren deserts of her soul. And in that moment she knew
that her marriage with Jim had become a final impossibility, and that it
was imperative upon her to write at once and tell him so.

She walked miles that day, and returned at length utterly wearied in
body and mind. She was facing the hardest problem of her life.

Not till after midnight was her letter to Jim finished, and even then
she could not rest. Had she utterly ruined the boy’s life? she wondered,
as she sealed and directed her crude, piteous appeal for freedom.

When the morning light came grey through her window she was still poring
above a blank sheet of notepaper.

This eventually carried but one sentence, addressed to the friend who
had stood by her in trouble; and later in the day she sent it by cable
to the other side of the world. The message ran: “Please cancel
engagement.–Evelyn.” His answering cable was brought to her at the
dinner-table. Two words only–”Delighted.–Lester.”

Out of a mist of floating uncertainty she saw her host bend towards her.

“All well, I trust?” he said kindly.

And she made a desperate effort to control her weakness and reply
naturally.

“Oh, quite, quite,” she said. “It is exactly what I expected.”
Nevertheless, she was trembling from head to foot, as if she had been
dealt a stunning blow.

Had she altogether expected so prompt and obliging a reply?

       *       *       *       *       *

Some weeks later, on an afternoon of bleak, early spring, Evelyn
wandered alone on the shore where she had bidden Jim Willowby farewell.
It was raining, and the sea was grey and desolate. The tide was coming
in with a fierce roaring that seemed to fill the whole world.

She had a letter from Jim in her hand–his answer to her appeal for
freedom; and she had sought the solitude of the shore in which to read
it.

She took shelter from the howling sea-wind behind a great boulder of
rock. She dreaded his reproaches unspeakably. For the past six weeks she
had lived in dread of that moment. Her fingers were shaking as she
opened the envelope that bore his boyish scrawl.

An enclosure fell out before she had withdrawn his letter. She caught it
up hastily before the wind could take possession. It was an unmounted
photograph–actually the portrait of a girl.

Evelyn stared at the roguish, laughing face with a great amazement.
Then, with a haste that baffled its own ends, she sought his letter.

It began with astounding jauntiness:

“DEAR OLD EVE,–What a pair of superhuman idiots we have
been! Many thanks for your sweet letter, which did me no end of
good. I never loved you so much before, dear. Can you believe it? I
am not surprised that you feel unequal to the task of keeping me in
order for the rest of our natural lives. Will it surprise you to
know that I had my doubts on the matter even when I wrote to
suggest it? Never mind, dear old girl, I understand. And may the
right man turn up soon and make you happy for the rest of your
life!

“I am sending a photograph of a girl who till three weeks ago was
no more than a friend to me, but has since become my fiancee.
Love is a wonderful thing, Eve. It comes upon you so suddenly and
carries you away before you have time to realise what has happened.
At least that has been my experience. There is no mistaking the
real thing when it actually comes to you.

“I am getting on awfully well, and like the life. By the way, it
was through your friend, Lester Cheveril, that I got this
appointment. A jolly decent chap that! I liked him from the first.
It isn’t every man who will stand being told he squints without
taking offence. We are hoping to get married next month.
Write–won’t you?–and send me your blessing. Much love–Yours
ever,

“JAMES WILLOBY.”

Evelyn looked up from the letter with a deep breath of relief. It was so
amazingly satisfactory. She almost forgot the emptiness of her own life
for the moment in her rejoicing over Jim’s happiness.

There was a little puddle of sea-water at her feet; and she climbed up
to a comfortable perch on her sheltering rock and turned her face to the
sea. Somehow, it did not seem so desolate as it had seemed five minutes
before. This particular seat was a favourite haunt of hers in the
summer. She loved to watch the tide come foaming up, and to feel the
salt spray in her face.

Five minutes later, a great wave came hurling at the rock on which she
sat, and, breaking in a torrent of foam, deluged her from head to foot.

She started up in swift alarm. The tide was coming in fast–much faster
than she had anticipated. The shore curved inwards in a deep bay just
there, and the cliffs rose sheer and unscalable from it to a
considerable height.

Evelyn seldom went down to the shore in the winter, and she was not
familiar with its dangers. The sea had seemed far enough out for safety
when she had rounded the point nearest to the town, barely half an hour
before. It was with almost incredulous horror that she saw that the
waves were already breaking at the foot of the cliffs she had skirted.

She turned with a sudden, awful fear at her heart to look towards the
farther point. It was a full mile away, and she saw instantly that she
could not possibly reach it in time. The waves were already foaming
white among the scattered boulders at its base.

Again a great wave broke behind her with a sound like the booming of a
gun; and she realised that she would be surrounded in less than thirty
seconds if she remained where she was. She slipped and slid down the
side of the rock with the speed of terror, and plunged recklessly into a
foot of water at the bottom. Before another wave broke she was dashing
and stumbling among the rocks like a frenzied creature seeking safety
from the remorseless, devouring monster that roared behind her.

The next five minutes of her life held for her an agony more terrible
than anything she had ever known. Sea, sky, wind, and sudden pelting
rain seemed leagued against her in a monstrous array against which she
battled vainly with her puny woman’s strength. The horror of it was like
a leaden, paralysing weight. She fought and struggled because instinct
compelled her; but at her heart was the awful knowledge that the sea had
claimed her and she could not possibly escape.

She made for the farther point of the bay, though she knew she could not
reach it in time. The loose shingle crumbled about her feet; the seaweed
trapped her everywhere. She fell a dozen times in that awful race, and
each time she rose in agony and tore on. The tumult all about her was
like the laughter of fiends. She felt as if hell had opened its mouth,
and she, poor soul, was its easy prey.

There came a moment at last when she tripped and fell headlong, and
could not rise again. That moment was the culmination of her anguish.
Neither soul nor body could endure more. Darkness–a howling, unholy
darkness–came down upon her in a thick cloud from which there was no
escape. She made a futile, convulsive effort to pray, and lost
consciousness in the act.

       *       *       *       *       *

Out of the darkness at length she came.

The tumult was still audible, but it was farther away, less
overwhelming. She opened her eyes in a strange, unnatural twilight, and
stared vaguely upwards.

At the same instant she became aware of some one at her side, bending
over her–a man whose face, revealed to her in the dim light, sent a
throb of wonder through her heart.

“You!” she said, speaking with a great effort. “Is it really you?”

He was rubbing one of her hands between his own. He paused to answer.

“Yes; it’s really me,” he said. And she fancied his voice quivered a
little. “They told me I might perhaps find you on the shore. Are you
better?”

She tried to sit up, and he helped her, keeping his arm about her
shoulders. She found herself lying on a ledge of rock high up in the
slanting wall of a deep and narrow cave. She knew the place well, and
had always avoided it with instinctive aversion. It was horribly eerie.
The rocky walls were wet with the ooze and slime of the ages. There was
a trickle of spring-water along the ridged floor.

Evelyn closed her eyes dizzily. The marvel of the man’s presence was
still upon her, but the horror of death haunted her also. She would
rather have been drowned outside on the howling shore than here.

“The sea comes in at high tide,” she murmured shakily.

Lester Cheveril, crouching beside her, made undaunted reply.

“Yes, I know. But it won’t touch us. Don’t be afraid!”

The assurance with which he spoke struck her very forcibly; but
something held her back from questioning the grounds of his confidence.

“How did you get here?” she asked him instead.

“I saw you from the corner of the bay,” he said. “It was before you left
your rock. I climbed round the point over the boulders. I thought at the
time that there must be some way up the cliff. Then I saw you start
running, and I knew you were cut off. I yelled to you, but I couldn’t
make you hear. So I had to give chase.”

His arm tightened a little about her.

“I am sorry you were scared,” he said. “Are you feeling better now?”

She could not understand him. He spoke with such entire absence of
anxiety. In spite of herself her own fears began to subside.

“Yes, I am better,” she said. “But–tell me more. Why didn’t you go back
when you saw what had happened?”

“I couldn’t,” he said simply. “Besides, even if they launched the
lifeboat, the chances were dead against their reaching you. I thought of
a rope, too. But that seemed equally risky. It was a choice of odds. I
chose what looked the easiest.”

“And carried me here?” she said.

The light, shining weirdly in upon his face, showed her that he was
smiling.

“I couldn’t stop to consult you,” he said. “I saw this hole, and I made
for it. I climbed up with you across my shoulder.”

“You are wonderfully strong,” she said, in a tone of surprise.

He laughed openly.

“Notwithstanding my size,” he said. “Yes; I’m fairly muscular, thank
Heaven.”

Evelyn’s mind was still working round the problem of deliverance.

“We shall have to stay here for hours,” she said, “even if–if—-”

He interrupted her with grave authority.

“There is no ‘if,’ Miss Harford,” he said. “We may have to spend some
hours here; but it will be in safety.”

“I don’t see how you can tell,” she ventured to remark, beginning to
look around her with greater composure notwithstanding.

“Providence doesn’t play practical jokes of that sort,” said Cheveril
quietly. “Do you know I have come from the other end of the earth to see
you?”

She felt the burning colour rush up to her temples, yet she made a
determined effort to look him in the face. His eyes, keen and kindly,
were searching hers, and she found she could not meet them.

“I–I don’t know what brought you,” she said, in a very low voice.

She felt the arm that supported her grow rigid, and guessed that he was
putting force upon himself as he made reply.

“Let me explain,” he said. “You sent me a cablegram which said, ‘Please
cancel engagement.’ Naturally that had but one meaning for me–you and
Jim Willowby had got the better of your difficulties, and were going to
be married. In the capacity of friend, I received the news with
rejoicing. So I cabled back ‘Delighted.’ Soon after that came a letter
from Jim to tell me you had thrown him over. Now, why?”

She answered him with her head bent:

“I found that I didn’t care for him quite in that way.”

Cheveril did not speak for several seconds. Then, abruptly, he said:

“There is another fellow in the business.”

She made a slight gesture of appeal, and remained silent.

He leaned forward slowly at length, and laid his hand upon both of hers.

“Evelyn,” he said very gently, “will you tell me his name?”

She shook her head instantly. Her lips were quivering, and she bit them
desperately.

He waited, but no word came. Outside, the roaring of the sea was
terrible and insistent. The great sound sent a shudder through the girl.
She shrank closer to the cold stone.

He pulled off his coat and wrapped it round her. Then, as if she had
been a child, he drew her gently into his arms, and held her so.

“Tell me–now,” he said softly.

But she hid her face dumbly. No words would come.

It seemed a long while before he spoke again.

“That cable of yours was a fraud,” he said then. “I was not–I am
not–prepared to release you from your engagement except under the
original condition.”

“I think you must,” she said faintly.

He sought for her cold hands and thrust them against his neck. And again
there was a long silence, while outside the sea raged fiercely, and far
below them in the distance a white streak of foam ran bubbling over the
rocky floor.

Soon the streak had become a stream of dancing, storm-tossed water.
Evelyn watched it with wide, fascinated eyes. But she made no sign of
fear. She felt as if he had, somehow, laid a quieting hand upon her
soul.

Higher the water rose, and higher. The cave was filled with dreadful
sound. It was almost dark, for dusk had fallen. She felt that but for
the man’s presence she would have been wild with fear. But his absolute
confidence wove a spell about her that no terror could penetrate. The
close holding of his arms was infinitely comforting to her. She knew
with complete certainty that he was not afraid.

“It’s very dark,” she whispered to him once; and he pressed her head
down upon his breast and told her not to look. Through the tumult she
heard the strong, quiet beating of his heart, and was ashamed of her own
mortal fear.

It seemed to her that hours passed while she crouched there, listening,
as the water rose and rose. She caught the gleam of it now and then, and
once her face was wet with spray. She clung closer and closer to her
companion, but she kept down her panic. She felt that he expected it of
her, and she would have died there in the dark, sooner than have
disappointed him.

At last, after an eternity of quiet waiting, he spoke.

“The tide has turned,” he said. And his tone carried conviction with it.

She raised her head to look.

A dim, silvery light shone mysteriously in revealing the black walls
above them, the tossing water below. It had been within a foot of their
resting-place, but it had dropped fully six inches.

Evelyn felt a great throb of relief pass through her. Only then did she
fully realise how great her fear had been.

“Is that the moon?” she asked wonderingly.

“Yes,” said Cheveril. He spoke in a low voice, even with reverence, she
thought. “We shall be out of this in an hour. It will light us home.”

“How–wonderful!” she said, half involuntarily.

Cheveril said no more; but the silence that fell between them was the
silence of that intimacy which only those who have stood together before
the great threshold of death can know. Many minutes passed before Evelyn
spoke again, and then her words came slowly, with hesitation.

“You knew?” she said. “You knew that we were safe?”

“Yes,” he answered quietly; “I knew. God doesn’t give with one hand and
take away with the other. Have you never noticed that?”

“I don’t know,” she answered with a sharp sigh. “He has never given me
anything very valuable.”

“Quite sure?” said Cheveril, and she caught the old quizzical note in
his voice.

She did not reply. She was trying to understand him in the darkness, and
she found it a difficult matter.

There followed a long, long silence. The roar of the breaking seas had
become remote and vague.

But the moonlight was growing brighter. The dark cave was no longer a
place of horror.

“Shall we go?” Evelyn suggested at last.

He peered downwards.

“I think we might,” he said. “No doubt your people will be very anxious
about you.”

They climbed down with difficulty, till they finally stood together on
the wet stones.

And there Cheveril reached out a hand and detained the girl beside him.

“That other fellow?” he said, in his quiet, half-humorous voice. “You
didn’t tell me his name.”

“Oh, please!” she said tremulously.

He took her hands gently into his, and stood facing her. The moonlight
was full in his eyes. They shone with a strange intensity.

“Do you remember,” he said, “how I once said to you that I was romantic
enough to like to see a love affair go the right way?”

She did not answer him. She was trembling in his hold.

He waited for a few seconds; then spoke, still kindly, but with a force
that in a measure compelled her:

“That is why I want you to tell me his name.”

She turned her face aside.

“I–I can’t!” she said piteously.

“Then I hold you to your engagement,” said Lester Cheveril, with quiet
determination.

Her hands leapt in his. She threw him a quick uncertain glance.

“You can’t mean that!” she said.

“I do mean it,” he rejoined resolutely.

“But–but–” she faltered. “You don’t really want to marry me? You
can’t!”

He looked grimly at her for a moment. Then abruptly he broke into a
laugh that rang and echoed exultantly in the deep shadows behind them.

“I want it more than anything else on earth,” he said. “Does that
satisfy you?”

His face was close to hers, but she felt no desire to escape. That laugh
of his was still ringing like sweetest music through her soul.

He took her shoulders between his hands, searching her face closely.

“And now,” he said–”now tell me his name!”

Yet a moment longer she withstood him. Then she yielded, and went into
his arms, laughing also–a broken, tearful laugh.

“His name is–Lester Cheveril,” she whispered. “But I–I can’t think how
you guessed.”

He answered her as he turned her face upwards to meet his own.

“The friend who stands by sees many things,” he said wisely. “And Love
is not always blind.”

“But you–you weren’t in love,” she protested. “Not when—-”

He interrupted her instantly and convincingly.

“I have always loved you,” he said.

And she believed him, because her own heart told her that he had spoken
the truth.

“We have been requested to announce that the marriage arranged between
Viscount Merrivale and Miss Hilary St. Orme will not take place.”

Viscount Merrivale was eating his breakfast when he chanced upon this
announcement. He was late that morning, and, contrary to custom, was
skimming through the paper at the same time. But the paragraph brought
both occupations to an abrupt standstill. He stared at the sheet for a
few moments as if he thought it was bewitched. His brown face reddened,
and he looked as if he were about to say something. Then he pushed the
paper aside with a contemptuous movement and drank his coffee.

His servant, appearing in answer to the bell a few minutes later, looked
at him with furtive curiosity. He had already seen the announcement,
being in the habit of studying society items before placing the paper
on the breakfast-table. But Merrivale’s clean-shaven face was free from
perturbation, and the man was puzzled.

“Reynolds,” Merrivale said, “I shall go out of town this afternoon. Have
the motor ready at four!”

“Very good, my lord.” Reynolds glanced at the table and noted with some
satisfaction that his master had only eaten one egg.

“Yes, I have finished,” Merrivale said, taking up the paper. “If Mr.
Culver calls, ask him to be good enough to wait for me. And–that’s all,”
he ended abruptly as he reached the door.

“As cool as a cucumber!” murmured Reynolds, as he began to clear the
table. “I shouldn’t wonder but what he stuck the notice in hisself.”

Merrivale, still with the morning paper in his hand, strolled easily down
to his club and collected a few letters. He then sauntered into the
smoking-room, where a knot of men, busily conversing in undertones, gave
him awkward greeting.

Merrivale lighted a cigar and sat down deliberately to study his paper.

Nearly an hour later he rose, nodded to several members, who glanced up
at him expectantly, and serenely took his departure.

A general buzz of discussion followed.

“He doesn’t look exactly heart-broken,” one man observed.

“Hearts grow tough in the West,” remarked another. “He has probably done
the breaking-off himself. Jack Merrivale, late of California, isn’t the
sort of chap to stand much trifling.”

A young man with quizzical eyes broke in with a laugh.

“Ask Mr. Cosmo Fletcher! He is really well up on that subject.”

“Also Mr. Richard Culver, apparently,” returned the first speaker.

Culver grinned and bowed.

“Certainly, sir,” he said. “But–luckily for himself–he has never
qualified for a leathering from Jack Merrivale, late of California. I
don’t believe myself that he did do the breaking-off. As they haven’t met
more than a dozen times, it can’t have gone very deep with him. And,
anyhow, I am certain the girl never cared twopence for anything except
his title, the imp. She’s my cousin, you know, so I can call her what I
like–always have.”

“I shouldn’t abuse the privilege in Merrivale’s presence if I were you,”
remarked the man who had expressed the opinion that Merrivale was not one
to stand much trifling.

       *       *       *       *       *

“Well, but wasn’t it unreasonable?” said Hilary St. Orme, with hands
clasped daintily behind her dark head. “Who could stand such tyranny as
that? And surely it’s much better to find out before than after. I hate
masterful men, Sybil. I am quite sure I could never have been happy with
him.”

The girl’s young step-mother looked across at the pretty, mutinous face
and sighed.

“It wasn’t a nice way of telling him so, I’m afraid, dear,” she said.
“Your father is very vexed.”

“But it was beautifully conclusive, wasn’t it?” laughed Hilary. “As to
the poor old pater, he won’t keep it up for ever, bless his simple heart,
that did want its daughter to be a viscountess. So while the fit lasts
I propose to judiciously absent my erring self. It’s a nuisance to have
to miss all the fun this season; but with the pater in the sulks it
wouldn’t be worth it. So I’m off to-morrow to join Bertie and the
house-boat at Riverton. As Dick has taken a bungalow close by, we shall
be quite a happy family party. They will be happy; I shall be happy; and
you–positively, darling, you won’t have a care left in the world. If it
weren’t for your matrimonial bonds, I should quite envy you.”

“I don’t think you ought to go down to Riverton without someone
responsible to look after you,” objected Mrs. St. Orme dubiously.

“My dear little mother, what a notion!” cried her step-daughter with a
merry laugh. “Who ever dreamt of the proprieties on the river? Why, I
spent a whole fortnight on the house-boat with only Bertie and the Badger
that time the poor old pater and I fell out over–what was it? Well, it
doesn’t matter. Anyhow, I did. And no one a bit the worse. Bertie is
equal to a dozen duennas, as everyone knows.”

“Don’t you really care, I wonder?” said Mrs. St. Orme, with wondering
eyes on the animated face.

“Why should I, dear?” laughed the girl, dropping upon a hassock at her
side. “I am my own mistress. I have a little money, and–considering
I am only twenty-four–quite a lot of wisdom. As to being Viscountess
Merrivale, I will say it fascinated me a little–just at first, you know.
And the poor old pater was so respectful I couldn’t help enjoying myself.
But the gilt soon wore off the gingerbread, and I really couldn’t enjoy
what was left. I said to myself, ‘My dear, that man has the makings of a
hectoring bully. You must cut yourself loose at once if you don’t want to
develop into that most miserable of all creatures, a down-trodden wife.’
So after our little tiff of the day before yesterday I sent the notice
off forthwith. And–you observe–it has taken effect. The tyrant hasn’t
been near.”

“You really mean to say the engagement wasn’t actually broken off before
you sent it?” said Mrs. St. Orme, looking shocked.

“It didn’t occur to either of us,” said Hilary, looking down with a
smile at the corners of her mouth. “He chose to take exception to my
being seen riding in the park with Mr. Fletcher. And I took exception to
his interference. Not that I like Mr. Fletcher, for I don’t. But I had to
assert my right to choose my own friends. He disputed it. And then we
parted. No one is going to interfere with my freedom.”

“You were never truly in love with him, then?” said Mrs. St. Orme, regret
and relief struggling in her voice.

Hilary looked up with clear eyes.

“Oh, never, darling!” she said tranquilly. “Nor he with me. I don’t know
what it means; do you? You can’t–surely–be in love with the poor old
pater?”

She laughed at the idea and idly took up a paper lying at hand. Half a
minute later she uttered a sharp cry and looked up with flaming cheeks.

“How–how–dare he?” she cried, almost incoherent with angry
astonishment. “Sybil! For Heaven’s sake! See!”

She thrust the paper upon her step-mother’s knee and pointed with a
finger that shook uncontrollably at a brief announcement in the society
column.

“We are requested to state that the announcement in yesterday’s issue
that the marriage arranged between Viscount Merrivale and Miss Hilary St.
Orme would not take place was erroneous. The marriage will take place, as
previously announced, towards the end of the season.”

       *       *       *       *       *

“What sublime assurance!” exclaimed Bertie St. Orme, lying on his back in
the luxurious punt which his sister was leisurely impelling up stream,
and laughing up at her flushed face. “This viscount of yours seems to
have plenty of decision of character, whatever else he may be lacking
in.”

Bertie St. Orme was a cripple, and spent every summer regularly upon the
river with his old manservant, nicknamed “the Badger.”

“Oh, he is quite impossible!” Hilary declared. “Let’s talk of something
else!”

“But he means to keep you to your word, eh?” her brother persisted. “How
will you get out of it?”

Hilary’s face flushed more deeply, and she bit her lip.

“There won’t be any getting out of it. Don’t be silly! I am free.”

“The end of the season!” teased Bertie. “That allows you–let’s
see–four, five, six more weeks of freedom.”

“Be quiet, if you don’t want a drenching!” warned Hilary. “Besides,” she
added, with inconsequent optimism, “anything may happen before then. Why,
I may even be married to a man I really like.”

“Great Scotland, so you may!” chuckled her brother. “There’s the wild man
that Dick has brought down here to tame before launching at society. He’s
a great beast like a brown bear. He wouldn’t be my taste, but that’s a
detail.”

“I hate fashionable men!” declared Hilary, with scarlet face. “I’d rather
marry a red Indian than one of these inane men about town.”

“Ho! ho!” laughed Bertie. “Then Dick’s wild man will be quite to your
taste. As soon as he leaves off worrying mutton-bones with his fingers
and teeth, we’ll ask Dick to bring him to dine.”

“You’re perfectly disgusting!” said Hilary, digging her punt-pole into
the bed of the river with a vicious plunge. “If you don’t mean to behave
yourself, I won’t stay with you.”

“Oh, yes, you will,” returned Bertie with brotherly assurance. “You
wouldn’t miss Dick’s aborigine for anything–and I don’t blame you, for
he’s worth seeing. Dick assures me that he is quite harmless, or I don’t
know that I should care to venture my scalp at such close quarters.”

“You’re positively ridiculous to-day,” Hilary declared.

       *       *       *       *       *

A perfect summer morning, a rippling blue river that shone like glass
where the willows dipped and trailed, and a girl who sang a murmurous
little song to herself as she slid down the bank into the laughing
stream.

Ah, it was heavenly! The sun-flecks on the water danced and swam all
about her. The trees whispered to one another above her floating form.
The roses on the garden balustrade of Dick Culver’s bungalow nodded as
though welcoming a friend. She turned over and struck out vigorously,
swimming up-stream. It was June, and the whole world was awake and
singing.

“It’s better than the entire London season put together,” she murmured to
herself, as she presently came drifting back.

A whiff of tobacco-smoke interrupted her soliloquy. She shook back her
wet hair and stood up waist-deep in the clear, green water.

“What ho, Dick!” she called gaily. “I can’t see you, but I know you’re
there. Come down and have a swim, you lazy boy!”

There followed a pause. Then a diffident voice with an unmistakably
foreign accent made reply.

“Were you speaking to me?”

Glancing up in the direction of the voice, Hilary discovered a stranger
seated against the trunk of a willow on the high bank above her. She
started and coloured. She had forgotten Dick’s wild man. She described
him later as the brownest man she had ever seen. His face was brown, the
lower part of it covered with a thick growth of brown beard. His eyes
were brown, surmounted by very bushy eyebrows. His hair was brown. His
hands were brown. His clothes were brown, and he was smoking what looked
like a brown clay pipe.

Hilary regained her self-possession almost at once. The diffidence of the
voice gave her assurance.

“I thought my cousin was there,” she explained. “You are Dick’s friend,
I think?”

The man on the bank smiled an affirmative, and Hilary remarked to herself
that he had splendid teeth.

“I am Dick’s friend,” he said, speaking slowly, as if learning the lesson
from her. There was a slight subdued twang in his utterance which
attracted Hilary immensely.

She nodded encouragingly to him.

“I am Dick’s cousin,” she said. “He will tell you all about me if you ask
him.”

“I will certainly ask,” the stranger said in his soft, foreign drawl.

“Don’t forget!” called Hilary, as she splashed back into deep water. “And
tell him to bring you to dine on our house-boat at eight to-night! Bertie
and I will be delighted to see you. We were meaning to send a formal
invitation. But no one stands on ceremony on the river–or in it either,”
she laughed to herself as she swam away with swift, even strokes.

“I shouldn’t have asked him in that way,” she explained to her brother
afterwards, “if he hadn’t been rather shy. One must be nice to
foreigners, and dear Dickie’s society undiluted would bore me to
extinction.”

“I don’t think we had better give him a knife at dinner,” remarked
Bertie. “I shouldn’t like you to be scalped, darling. It would ruin your
prospects. I suppose my only course would be to insist upon his marrying
you forthwith.”

“Bertie, you’re a beast!” said his sister tersely.

       *       *       *       *       *

“We have taken you at your word, you see,” sang out Dick Culver from his
punt. “I hope you haven’t thought better of it by any chance, for my
friend has been able to think of nothing else all day.”

A slim white figure danced eagerly out of the tiny dining-saloon of the
house-boat.

“Come on board!” she cried hospitably. “The Badger will see to your punt.
I am glad you’re not late.”

She held out her hand to the new-comer with a pretty lack of ceremony. He
looked more than ever like a backwoodsman, but it was quite evident that
he was pleased with his surroundings. He shook hands with her almost
reverently, and smiled in a quiet, well-satisfied way. But, having
nothing to say, he did not vex himself to put it into words–a trait
which strongly appealed to Hilary.

“His name,” said Dick Culver, laughing at his cousin over the big man’s
shoulder, “is Jacques. He has another, but, as nobody ever uses it, it
isn’t to the point, and I never was good at pronunciation. He is a French
Canadian, with a dash of Yankee thrown in. He is of a peaceable
disposition except when roused, when all his friends find it advisable
to give him a wide berth. He–”

“That’ll do, my dear fellow,” softly interposed the stranger, with a
gentle lift of the elbow in Culver’s direction. “Leave Miss St. Orme to
find out the rest for herself! I hope she is not easily alarmed.”

“Not at all, I assure you,” said Hilary. “Never mind Dick! No one does.
Come inside!”

She led the way with light feet. Her exile from London during the season
promised to be less deadly than she had anticipated. Unmistakably she
liked Dick’s wild man.

They found Bertie in the little roselit saloon, and as he welcomed the
stranger Culver drew Hilary aside. There was much mystery on his comical
face.

“I’ll tell you a secret,” he murmured; “this fellow is a great chief in
his own country, but he doesn’t want anyone to know it. He’s coming here
to learn a little of our ways, and he’s particularly interested in
English women, so be nice to him.”

“I thought you said he was a French Canadian,” said Hilary.

“That’s what he wants to appear,” said Culver. “And, anyhow, he had a
Yankee mother. I know that for a fact. He’s quite civilised, you know.
You needn’t be afraid of him.”

“Afraid!” exclaimed Hilary.

Turning, she found the new-comer looking at her with brown eyes that were
soft under the bushy brows.

“He can’t be a red man,” she said to herself. “He hasn’t got the
cheek-bones.”

Leaving Dick to amuse himself, she smiled upon her other guest with
winning graciousness and forthwith began the dainty task of initiating
him into the ways of English women.

She was relieved to find that, notwithstanding his hairy appearance, he
was, as Dick had assured her, quite civilised. As the meal proceeded she
suddenly conceived an interest in Canada and the States, which had never
before possessed her. She questioned him with growing eagerness, and he
replied with a smile and always that half-reverent, half-shy courtliness
that had first attracted her. Undoubtedly he was a pleasant companion. He
clothed the information for which she asked in careful and picturesque
language. He was ready at any moment to render any service, however
slight, but his attentions were so unobtrusive that Hilary could not
but accept them with pleasure. She maintained her pretty graciousness
throughout dinner, anxious to set him at his ease.

“Englishmen are not half so nice,” she said to herself, as she rose from
the table. And she thought of the stubborn Viscount Merrivale as she
said it.

There was a friendly regret at her departure written in the man’s eyes as
he opened the door for her, and with a sudden girlish impulse she paused.

“Why don’t you come and smoke your cigar in the punt?” she said.

He glanced irresolutely over his shoulder at the other two men who were
discussing some political problem with much absorption.

With a curious desire to have her way with him, the girl waited with a
little laugh.

“Come!” she said softly. “You can’t be interested in British politics.”

He looked at her with his friendly, silent smile, and followed her out.

       *       *       *       *       *

“Isn’t it heavenly?” breathed Hilary, as she lay back on the velvet
cushions and watched the man’s strong figure bend to the punt-pole.

“I think it is Heaven, Miss St. Orme,” he answered in a hushed voice.

The sun had scarcely set in a cloudless shimmer of rose, and, sailing up
from the east, a full moon cast a rippling, silvery pathway upon the
mysterious water.

The girl drew a long sigh of satisfaction, then laughed a little.

“What a shame to make you work after dinner!” she said.

She saw his smile in the moonlight.

“Do you call this work?” She seemed to hear a faint ring of amusement in
the slowly-uttered question.

“You are very strong,” she said almost involuntarily.

“Yes,” he agreed quietly, and there suddenly ran a curious thrill through
her–a feeling that she and he had once been kindred spirits together in
another world.

She felt as if their intimacy had advanced by strides when she spoke
again, and the sensation was one of a strange, quivering delight which
the perfection of the June night seemed to wholly justify. Anyhow, it was
not a moment for probing her inner self with searching questions. She
turned a little and suffered her fingers to trail through the moonlit
water.

“I wonder if you would tell me something?” she said almost diffidently.

“If it lies in my power,” he answered courteously.

“You may think it rude,” she suggested, with a most unusual attack of
timidity. It had been her habit all her life to command rather than to
request. But somehow the very courtesy with which this man treated her
made her uncertain of herself.

“I shall not think anything so–impossible,” he assured her gently, and
again she saw his smile.

“Well,” she said, looking up at him intently, “will you–please–let me
into your secret? I promise I won’t tell. But do tell me who you are!”

There followed a silence, during which the man leaned a little on his
pole, gazing downwards while he kept the punt motionless. The water
babbled round them with a tinkling murmur that was like the laughter of
fairy voices. They had passed beyond the region of house-boats and
bungalows, and the night was very still.

At last the man spoke, and the girl gave a queer little motion of relief.

“I should like to tell you everything there is to know about me,” he said
in his careful, foreign English. “But–will you forgive me?–I do not
feel myself able to do so–yet. Some day I will answer your question
gladly–I hope some day soon–if you are kind enough to continue to
extend to me your interest and your friendship.”

He looked down into Hilary’s uplifted face with a queer wistfulness that
struck unexpectedly straight to her heart. She felt suddenly that this
man’s past contained something of loss and disappointment of which he
could not lightly speak to a mere casual acquaintance.

With the quickness of impulse characteristic of her, she smiled
sympathetic comprehension.

“And you won’t even tell me your name?” she said.

He bent again to the pole, and she saw his teeth shine in the moonlight.
“I think my friend told you one of my names,” he said.

“Oh, it’s much too commonplace,” she protested. “Quite half the men
I know are called Jack.”

And then for the first time she heard him laugh–a low, exultant laugh
that sent the blood in a sudden rush to her cheeks.

“Shall we go back now?” she suggested, turning her face away.

He obeyed her instantly, and the punt began to glide back through the
ripples.

No further word passed between them till, as they neared the house-boat,
the high, keen notes of a flute floated out upon the tender silence.

Hilary glanced up sharply, the moonlight on her face, and saw a group of
men in a punt moored under the shadowy bank. One of them raised his
hand and sent a ringing salutation across the water.

Hilary nodded and turned aside. There was annoyance on her face–the
annoyance of one suddenly awakened from a dream of complete enjoyment.

Her companion asked no question. He was bending vigorously to his work.
But she seemed to consider some explanation to be due to him.

“That,” she said, “is a man I know slightly. His name is Cosmo Fletcher.”

“A friend?” asked the big man.

Hilary coloured a little.

“Well,” she said half-reluctantly, “I suppose one would call him that.”

       *       *       *       *       *

“I believe you’re in love with Culver’s half-breed American,” said Cosmo
Fletcher brutally, nearly three weeks later. He had just been rejected
finally and emphatically by the girl who faced him in the stern of his
skiff.

She was very pale, but her eyes were full of resolution as they met his.

“That,” she said, “is no business of yours. Please take me back!”

He looked as if he would have liked to refuse, but her steadfast eyes
compelled him. Sullenly he turned the boat.

Dead silence reigned between them till, as they rounded a bend in the
river and came within sight of the house-boat, Fletcher, glancing over
his shoulder, caught sight of a big figure seated on the deck.

Then he turned to the girl with a sneer:

“It might interest Jack Merrivale to hear of this pretty little romance
of yours,” he said.

The colour flamed in her cheeks.

“Tell him then!” she said defiantly.

“I think I must,” said Fletcher. “He and I are such old friends.”

He waited for her to tell him that it was on his account that they had
quarrelled, but she would not so far gratify him, maintaining a stubborn
silence till they drew alongside. Jacques rose to hand her on board.

“I hope you have enjoyed your row,” he said courteously.

“Thanks!” she returned briefly, avoiding his eyes. “I think it is too hot
to enjoy anything to-day.”

The tea-kettle was singing merrily on the dainty brass spirit-lamp, and
she sat down at the table forthwith.

Jacques stood beside her, silent and friendly as a tame mastiff. Perhaps
his presence after what had just passed between herself and Fletcher made
her nervous, or perhaps her thoughts were elsewhere and she forgot to be
cautious. Whatever the cause, she took up the kettle carelessly and
knocked it against the spirit-lamp with some force.

Jacques swooped forward and steadied it before it could overturn; but the
dodging flame caught the girl’s muslin sleeve and set it ablaze in an
instant. She uttered a cry and started up with a wild idea of flinging
herself into the river, but Jacques was too quick for her. He turned and
seized the burning fabric in his great hands, ripping it away from her
arm and crushing out the flames with unflinching strength.

“Don’t be frightened!” he said. “It’s all right. I’ve got it out.”

“And what of you?” she gasped, eyes of horror on his blackened hands.

He smiled at her reassuringly.

“Well done, man!” cried Dick Culver. “It was like you to save her life
while we were thinking about it. Are you hurt, Hilary?”

“No,” she said, with trembling lips. “But–but–”

She broke off on the verge of tears, and Dick considerately transferred
his attention to his friend.

“Let’s see the damage, old fellow!”

“It is nothing,” said Jacques, still faintly smiling. “Yes, you may see
it if you like, if only to prove that I speak the truth.”

He thrust out one hand and displayed a scorched and blistered palm.

“Call that nothing!” began Dick.

Fletcher suddenly pushed forward with an oath that startled them all.

“I should know that hand anywhere!” he exclaimed. “You infernal, lying
impostor!”

There was an elaborate tattoo of the American flag on the extended wrist,
to which he pointed with a furious laugh.

“Deny it if you can!” he said.

Jacques looked at him gravely, without the smallest sign of agitation.

“You certainly have good reason to know that hand rather well,” he said
after a moment, speaking with extreme deliberation, “considering that it
has had the privilege of giving you the finest thrashing of your life.”

Fletcher turned purple. He looked as if he were going to strike the
speaker on the mouth. But before he could raise his hand Hilary suddenly
forced herself between them.

“Mr. Fletcher,” she said, her voice quivering with anger, “go instantly!
There is your boat. And never come near us again!”

Fletcher fell back a step, but he was too furious to obey such a command.

“Do you think I am going to leave that confounded humbug to have it all
his own way?” he snarled. “I tell you–”

But here Culver intervened.

“You shut up!” he ordered sternly. “We’ve had too much of you already.
You had better go.”

He took Fletcher imperatively by the arm, but Jacques intervened.

“Pray let the gentleman speak, Dick!” he said. “It will ease his feelings
perhaps.”

“No!” broke in Hilary breathlessly. “No, no! I won’t listen! I tell you
I won’t!” facing the big man almost fiercely. “Tell me yourself if you
like!”

He looked at her closely, still with that odd half-smile upon his face.

Then, before them all, he took her hand, and, bending, held it to his
lips.

“Thank you, Hilary!” he said very softly.

In the privacy of her own cabin Hilary removed her tatters and cooled her
tingling cheeks. She and her brother were engaged to dine at Dick’s
bungalow that night, but an overwhelming shyness possessed her, and at
the last moment she persuaded Bertie to go alone. It was plain that
for some reason Bertie was hugely amused, and she thought it rather
heartless of him.

She dined alone on the house-boat with her face to the river. Her fright
had made her somewhat nervous, and she was inclined to start at every
sound. When the meal was over she went up to her favourite retreat on the
upper deck. A golden twilight still lingered in the air, and the river
was mysteriously calm. But the girl’s heart was full of a heavy
restlessness. Each time she heard a punt-pole striking on the bed of the
river she raised her head to look.

He came at last–the man for whom her heart waited. He was punting
rapidly down-stream, and she could not see his face. Yet she knew him,
by the swing of his arms, the goodly strength of his muscles,–and by the
suffocating beating of her heart. She saw that one hand was bandaged, and
a passionate feeling that was almost rapture thrilled through and through
her at the sight. Then he shot beyond her vision, and she heard the punt
bump against the house-boat.

“It’s a gentleman to see you, miss,” said the Badger, thrusting a grey
and grinning visage up the stairs.

“Ask him to come up!” said Hilary, steadying her voice with an effort.

A moment later she rose to receive the man she loved. And her heart
suddenly ceased to beat.

“You!” she gasped, in a choked whisper.

He came straight forward. The last light of the day shone on his smooth
brown face, with its steady eyes and strong mouth.

“Yes,” he said, and still through his quiet tones she seemed to hear a
faint echo of the subdued twang which dwellers in the Far West sometimes
acquire. “I, John Merrivale, late of California, beg to render to you,
Hilary St. Orme, in addition to my respectful homage, that freedom for
which you have not deigned to ask.”

She stared at him dumbly, one hand pressed against her breast. The ripple
of the river ran softly through the silence. Slowly at last Merrivale
turned to go.

And then sharply, uncertainly, she spoke.

“Wait, please!” she said.

She moved close to him and laid her hand on the flower-bedecked
balustrade, trembling very much.

“Why have you done this?” Her quivering voice sounded like a prayer.

He hesitated, then answered her quietly through the gloom.

“I did it because I loved you.”

“And what did you hope to gain by it?” breathed Hilary.

He did not answer, and she drew a little nearer as though his silence
reassured her.

“Wouldn’t it have saved a lot of trouble,” she said, her voice very low
but no longer uncertain, “if you had given me my freedom in the first
place? Don’t you think you ought to have done that?”

“I don’t know,” Merrivale said. “That fellow spoilt my game. So I offer
it to you now–with apologies.”

“I should have appreciated it–in the first place,” said Hilary, and
suddenly there was a ripple of laughter in her voice like an echo of the
water below them. “But now I–I–have no use for it. It’s too late. Do
you know, Jack, I’m not sure he did spoil your game after all!”

He turned towards her swiftly, and she thrust out her hands to him with a
quick sob that became a laugh as she felt his arms about her.

“You hairless monster!” she said. “What woman ever wanted freedom when
she could have–Love?”

       *       *       *       *       *

Two days later Viscount Merrivale’s friends at the club read with
interest and some amusement the announcement that his marriage to Miss
Hilary St. Orme had been fixed to take place on the last day of the
month.

“My dear child, it’s absurd to be romantic over such a serious matter as
marriage–the greatest mistake, I assure you. Nothing could be more
suitable than an alliance with this very eligible young man. He plainly
thinks so himself. If you are so unreasonable as to throw away this
magnificent chance, I shall really feel inclined to give you up in
despair.”

The soft, drawling accents fell with a gentle sigh through the perfumed
silence of the speaker’s boudoir. She was an elderly woman, beautiful,
with that delicate, china-like beauty that never fades from youth to
age. Not even Lady Raffold’s enemies had ever disputed the fact of her
beauty, not even her stepdaughter, firmly though she despised her.

She sat behind the tea-table, this stepdaughter, dark and inscrutable, a
grave, unresponsive listener. Her grey eyes never varied as Lady
Raffold’s protest came lispingly through the quiet room. She might have
been turning over some altogether irrelevant problem at the back of her
mind. It was this girl’s way to hide herself behind a shield of apparent
preoccupation when anything jarred upon her.

“I need scarcely tell you what it would mean to your father,” went on
the soft voice. “Ever since poor Mortimer’s death it has fretted him
terribly to think that the estates must pass out of the direct line.
Indeed, he hardly feels that the present heir belongs to the family at
all. The American branch has always seemed so remote. But now that the
young man is actually coming over to see his inheritance, it does seem
such a Heaven-sent chance for you. You know, dear, it’s your sixth
season. You really ought to think seriously of getting settled. I am
sure it would be a great weight off my mind to see you suitably married.
And this young Cochrane is sure to take a reasonable view of the matter.
Americans are so admirably practical. And, of course, if your father
could leave all his money to the estates, as this marriage would enable
him to do, it would be a very excellent arrangement for all concerned.”

The girl at the tea-table made a slight–a very slight–movement that
scarcely amounted to a gesture of impatience. The gentle drone of her
stepmother’s voice was becoming monotonous. But she said nothing
whatever, and her expression did not change.

A faintly fretful note crept into Lady Raffold’s tone when she spoke
again.

“You’re so unreasonable, Priscilla. I really haven’t a notion what you
actually want. You might have been a duchess by this time, as all the
world knows, if you had only been reasonable. How is it–why is it–that
you are so hard to please?”

Lady Priscilla raised her eyelids momentarily.

“I don’t think you would understand, Charlotte, if I were to tell you,”
she said, in a voice of such deep music that it seemed incapable of
bitterness.

“Some ridiculous sentimentality, no doubt,” said Lady Raffold.

“I am sure you would call it so.”

A faint flush rose in the girl’s dark face. She looked at her stepmother
no longer, but began very quietly and steadily to make the tea.

Lady Raffold waited a few seconds for her confidence, but she waited in
vain. Lady Priscilla had retired completely behind her shield, and it
was quite obvious that she had no intention of exposing herself any
further to stray shots.

Her stepmother was exasperated, but she found it difficult to say
anything more upon the subject in face of this impenetrability. She
could only solace herself with the reflection that the American cousin,
who had become heir to the earldom and estates of Raffold, would almost
certainly take a more common-sense view of the matter, and, if that were
so, a little pressure from the girl’s father, whom she idolised, would
probably be sufficient to settle it according to her desires.

It was so plainly Priscilla’s duty to marry the young man. The whole
thing seemed to be planned and cut out by Providence. And it was but
natural that Ralph Cochrane should see it in the same light. For it was
understood that he was not rich, and it would be greatly to his interest
to marry Earl Raffold’s only surviving child.

So Lady Raffold reasoned to herself as Priscilla poured out the tea in
serious silence, and she gradually soothed her own annoyance by the
process.

“Come,” she said at length, breaking a long silence, “I should think
Ralph Cochrane will be in England in ten days at the latest. We must not
be too formal with him as he is a relation. Shall we ask him to luncheon
on the Sunday after next?”

Priscilla did not at once reply. When at length she looked up, it was
with the air of one coming out of a reverie.

“Oh, yes, if you like, Charlotte,” she said, in her deep, quiet voice.
“No doubt he will amuse you. I know you always enjoy Americans.”

“And you, my dear?” said Lady Raffold, with just a hint of sharpness in
her tone.

“I?” Again her stepdaughter paused a little, as if collecting her
thoughts. “I shall not be here,” she said finally. “I have decided to go
down to Raffold for midsummer week, and I don’t suppose I shall hurry
back. It won’t matter, will it? I often think that you entertain best
alone. And I am so tired of London heat and dust.”

There was an unconscious note of wistfulness in the beautiful voice, but
its dominant virtue was determination.

Lady Raffold realised at once to her unspeakable indignation that
protest was useless.

“Really, Priscilla,” was all she found to say, “I am amazed–yes,
amazed–at your total lack of consideration.”

But Priscilla was quite unimpressed.

“You won’t have time to miss me,” she said. “I don’t think any one will,
except, perhaps, Dad; and he always knows where to find me.”

“Your father will certainly not leave town before the end of the
season,” said Lady Raffold, raising her voice slightly.

“Poor dear Dad!” murmured Priscilla.

The persistent chirping of a sparrow made it almost harder to bear. Lady
Brooke finally rose abruptly from the table, her black brows drawn close
together, and swept to the window to scare the intruder away.

“I really have not the smallest idea what your objections can be,” she
observed, pausing with her back to the room.

“A little exercise of your imagination might be of some assistance to
you,” returned her husband dryly, not troubling to raise his eyes from
his paper.

He was leaning back in a chair in an attitude of unstudied ease. It was
characteristic of Sir Roland Brooke to make himself physically
comfortable at least, whatever his mental atmosphere. He seldom raised
his voice, and never swore. Yet there was about him a certain amount of
force that made itself felt more by his silence than his speech.

His young wife, though she shrugged her shoulders and looked
contemptuous, did not venture upon open defiance.

“I am to decline the invitation, then?” she asked presently, without
turning.

“Certainly!” Sir Roland again made leisurely reply as he scanned the
page before him.

“And give as an excuse that you are too staunch a Tory to approve of
such an innovation as the waltz?”

“You may give any excuse that you consider suitable,” he returned with
unruffled composure.

“I know of none,” she answered, with a quick vehemence that trembled on
the edge of rebellion.

Sir Roland turned very slowly in his chair and regarded the delicate
outline of his wife’s figure against the window-frame.

“Then, my dear,” he said very deliberately, “let me recommend you once
more to have recourse to your ever romantic imagination!”

She quivered, and clenched her hands, as if goaded beyond endurance.
“You do not treat me fairly,” she murmured under her breath.

Sir Roland continued to look at her with the air of a naturalist
examining an interesting specimen of his cult. He said nothing till,
driven by his scrutiny, she turned and faced him.

“What is your complaint?” he asked then.

She hesitated for an instant. There was doubt–even a hint of
fear–upon her beautiful face. Then, with a certain recklessness, she
spoke:

“I have been accustomed to freedom of action all my life. I never
dreamed, when I married you, that I should be called upon to sacrifice
this.”

Her voice quivered. She would not meet his eyes. Sir Roland sat and
passively regarded her. His face expressed no more than a detached and
waning interest.

“I am sorry,” he said finally, “that the romance of your marriage has
ceased to attract you. But I was not aware that its hold upon you was
ever very strong.”

Lady Brooke made a quick movement, and broke into a light laugh.

“It certainly did not fall upon very fruitful ground,” she said. “It is
scarcely surprising that it did not flourish.”

Sir Roland made no response. The interest had faded entirely from his
face. He looked supremely bored.

Lady Brooke moved towards the door.

“It seems to be your pleasure to thwart me at every turn,” she said. “A
labourer’s wife has more variety in her existence than I.”

“Infinitely more,” said Sir Roland, returning to his paper. “A
labourer’s wife, my dear, has an occasional beating to chasten her
spirit, and she is considerably the better for it.”

His wife stood still, very erect and queenly.

“Not only the better, but the happier,” she said very bitterly. “Even a
dog would rather be beaten than kicked to one side.”

Sir Roland lowered his paper again with startling suddenness.

“Is that your point of view?” he said. “Then I fear I have been
neglecting my duty most outrageously. However, it is an omission easily
remedied. Let me hear no more of this masquerade, Lady Brooke! You have
my orders, and if you transgress them you will be punished in a fashion
scarcely to your liking. Is that clearly understood?”

He looked straight up at her with cold, smiling eyes that yet seemed to
convey a steely warning.

She shivered very slightly as she encountered them. “You make a mockery
of everything,” she said, her voice very low.

Sir Roland uttered a quiet laugh.

“I am nevertheless a man of my word, Naomi,” he said. “If you wish to
test me, you have your opportunity.”

He immersed himself finally in his paper as he ended, and she, with a
smile of proud contempt, turned and passed from the room.

She had married him out of pique, it was true, but life with him had
never seemed intolerable until he had shown her that he knew it.

She took her invitation with her, and in her own room sat down to read
it once again. It was from a near neighbour, Lady Blythebury, an
acquaintance with whom she was more intimate than was Sir Roland. Lady
Blythebury was a very lively person indeed. She had been on the stage in
her young days, and she had decidedly advanced ideas on the subject of
social entertainment. As a hostess, she was notorious for her
originality and energy, and though some of the county families
disapproved of her, she always knew how to secure as many guests as she
desired. Lady Brooke had known her previous to her own marriage, and she
clung to this friendship, notwithstanding Sir Roland’s very obvious lack
of sympathy.

He knew Lord Blythebury in the hunting-field. Their properties adjoined,
and it was inevitable that certain courtesies should be exchanged. But
he refused so steadily to fall a captive to Lady Blythebury’s bow and
spear, that he very speedily aroused her aversion. He soon realised that
her influence over his wife was very far from benevolent towards
himself, but, save that he persisted in declining all social invitations
to Blythebury, he made no attempt to counteract the evil. In fact, it
was not his custom to coerce her. He denied her very little, though with
regard to that little he was as adamant.

But to Naomi his non-interference was many a time more galling than his
interdiction. It was but seldom that she attempted to oppose him, and,
save that Lady Blythebury’s masquerade had been discussed between them
for weeks, she would not have greatly cared for his refusal to attend
it. When Sir Roland asserted himself, it was her habit to yield without
argument.

But now, for the first time, she asked herself if he were not presuming
upon her wifely submission. He would think more of her if she resisted
him, whispered her hurt pride, recalling the courteous indifference
which it was his custom to mete out to her. But dared she do this
thing?

She took up the invitation again and read it. It was to be a fancy-dress
ball, and all were to wear masks. The waltz which she had learned to
dance from Lady Blythebury herself and which was only just coming into
vogue in England, was to be one of the greatest features of the evening.
There would be no foolish formality, Lady Blythebury had assured her.
The masks would preclude that. Altogether the whole entertainment
promised to be of so entrancing a nature that she had permitted herself
to look forward to it with considerable pleasure. But she might have
guessed that Sir Roland would refuse to go, she reflected, as she sat in
her dainty room with the invitation before her. Did he ever attend any
function that was not so stiff and dull that she invariably pined to
depart from the moment of arrival?

Again she read the invitation, recalling Lady Blythebury’s gay words
when last they had talked the matter over.

“If only Una could come without the lion for once!” she had said.

And she herself had almost echoed the wish. Sir Roland always spoilt
everything.

Well!–She took up her pen. She supposed she must refuse. A moment it
hovered above the paper. Then, very slowly, it descended and began to
write.

       *       *       *

The chatter of many voices and the rhythm of dancing feet, the strains
of a string-band in the distance, and, piercing all, the clear, high
notes of a flute, filled the spring night with wonderful sound. Lady
Blythebury had turned her husband’s house into a fairy palace of
delight. She stood in the doorway of the ballroom, her florid face
beaming above her Elizabethan ruffles, looking in upon the gay and
ever-shifting scene which she had called into being.

“I feel as if I had stepped into an Arabian Night,” she laughed to one
of her guests, who stood beside her. He was dressed as a court jester,
and carried a wand which he flourished dramatically. He wore a
close-fitting black mask.

“There is certainly magic abroad,” he declared, in a rich, Irish brogue
that Lady Blythebury smiled to hear. For she also was Irish to the
backbone.

“You know something of the art yourself, Captain Sullivan?” she asked.

She knew the man for a friend of her husband’s. He was more or less
disreputable, she believed, but he was none the less welcome on that
account. It was just such men as he who knew how to make things a
success. She relied upon the disreputable more than she would have
admitted.

“Egad, I’m no novice in most things!” declared the court jester, waving
his wand bombastically. “But it’s the magic of a pretty woman that I’m
after at the present moment. These masks, Lady Blythebury, are uncommon
inconvenient. It’s yourself that knows better than to wear one. Sure,
beauty should never go veiled.”

Lady Blythebury laughed indulgently. Though she knew it for what it was,
the fellow’s blarney was good to hear.

“Ah, go and dance!” she said. “I’ve heard all that before. It never
means anything. Go and dance with the little lady over there in the pink
domino! I give you my word that she is pretty. Her name is Una, but she
is minus the lion on this occasion. I shall tell you no more than that.”

“Egad! It’s more than enough!” said the court jester, as he bowed and
moved away.

The lady indicated stood alone in the curtained embrasure of a
bay-window. She was watching the dancers with an absorbed air, and did
not notice his approach.

He drew near, walking with a free swagger in time to the haunting
waltz-music. Reaching her, he stopped and executed a sweeping bow, his
hand upon his heart.

“May I have the pleasure–”

She looked up with a start. Her eyes shone through her mask with a
momentary irresolution as she bent in response to his bow.

With scarcely a pause he offered her his arm.

“You dance the waltz?”

She hesitated for a second; then, with an affirmatory murmur, accepted
the proffered arm. The bold stare with which he met her look had in it
something of compulsion.

He led her instantly away from her retreat, and in a moment his hand was
upon her waist. He guided her into the gay stream of dancers without a
word.

They began to waltz–a dream–waltz in which she seemed to float without
effort, without conscious volition. Instinctively she responded to his
touch, keenly, vibrantly aware of the arm that supported her, of the
dark, free eyes that persistently sought her own.

“Faith!” he suddenly said in his soft, Irish voice. “To find Una without
the lion is a piece of good fortune I had scarcely prayed for. And what
was the persuasion that you used at all to keep the monster in his den?”

She glanced up, half-startled by his speech. What did this man know
about her?

“If you mean my husband,” she said at last, “I did not persuade him. He
never wished or intended to come.”

Her companion laughed as one well pleased.

“Very generous of him!” he commented, in a tone that sent the blood to
her cheeks.

He guided her dexterously among the dancers. The girl’s breath came
quickly, unevenly, but her feet never faltered.

“If I were the lion,” said her partner daringly, “by the powers, I’d
play the part! I wouldn’t be a tame beast, egad! If Una went out to a
fancy ball, my faith, I would go too!”

Lady Brooke uttered a little, excited laugh. The words caught her
interest.

“And suppose Una went without your leave?” she said.

The Irishman looked at her with a humorous twist at one corner of his
mouth.

“I’m thinking that I’d still go too,” he said.

“But if you didn’t know?” She asked the question with a curious
vehemence. Her instinct told her that, however he might profess to
trifle, here at least was a man.

“That wouldn’t happen,” he said, with conviction, “if I were the lion.”

The music was quickening to the finale, and she felt the strong arm
grow tense about her.

“Come!” he said. “We will go into the garden.”

She went with him because it seemed that she must, but deep in her heart
there lurked a certain misgiving. There was an almost arrogant air of
power about this man. She wondered what Sir Roland would say if he knew,
and comforted herself almost immediately with the reflection that he
never could know. He had gone to Scotland, and she did not expect him
back for several weeks.

So she turned aside with this stranger, and passed out upon his arm into
the dusk of the soft spring night.

“You know these gardens well?” he questioned.

She came out of her meditations.

“Not really well. Lady Blythebury and I are friends, but we do not visit
very often.”

“And that but secretly,” he laughed, “when the lion is absent?” She did
not answer him, and he continued after a moment: “‘Pon my life, the
very mention of him seems to cast a cloud. Let us draw a magic circle,
and exclude him!” He waved his wand. “You knew that I was a magician?”

There was a hint of something more than banter in his voice. They had
reached the end of the terrace, and were slowly descending the steps.
But at his last words, Lady Brooke stood suddenly still.

“I only believe in one sort of magic,” she said, “and that is beyond the
reach of all but fools.”

Her voice quivered with an almost passionate disdain. She was suddenly
aware of an intense burning misery that seemed to gnaw into her very
soul. Why had she come out with this buffoon, she wondered? Why had she
come to the masquerade at all? She was utterly out of sympathy with its
festive gaiety. A great and overmastering desire for solitude descended
upon her. She turned almost angrily to go.

But in the same instant the jester’s hand caught her own.

“Even so, lady,” he said. “But the magic of fools has led to paradise
before now.”

She laughed out bitterly:

“A fool’s paradise!”

“Is ever green,” he said whimsically. “Faith, it’s no place at all for
cynics. Shall we go hand in hand to find it then–in case you miss the
way?”

She laughed again at the quaint adroitness of his speech. But her lips
were curiously unsteady, and she found the darkness very comforting.
There was no moon, and the sky was veiled. She suffered the strong clasp
of his fingers about her own without protest. What did it matter–for
just one night?

“Where are we going?” she asked.

“Wait till we get there!” murmured her companion. “We are just within
the magic circle. Una has escaped from the lion.”

She felt turf beneath her feet, and once or twice the brushing of twigs
against her hand. She began to have a faint suspicion as to whither he
was leading her. But she would not ask a second time. She had yielded to
his guidance, and though her heart fluttered strangely she would not
seem to doubt. The dread of Sir Roland’s displeasure had receded to the
back of her mind. Surely there was indeed magic abroad that night! It
seemed diffused in the very air she breathed. In silence they moved
along the dim grass path. From far away there came to them fitfully the
sound of music, remote and wonderful, like straying echoes of paradise.
A soft wind stirred above them, lingering secretly among opening leaves.
There was a scent of violets almost intoxicatingly sweet.

The silence seemed magnetic. It held them like a spell. Through it,
vague and intangible as the night at first, but gradually taking
definite shape, strange thoughts began to rise in the girl’s heart.

She had consented to this adventure from sheer lack of purpose. But
whither was it leading her? She was a married woman, with her shackles
heavy upon her. Yet she walked that night with a stranger, as one who
owned her freedom. The silence between them was intimate and wonderful,
the silence which only kindred spirits can ever know. It possessed her
magically, making her past life seem dim and shadowy, and the present
only real.

And yet she knew that she was not free. She trespassed on forbidden
ground. She tasted the forbidden fruit, and found it tragically sweet.

Suddenly and softly he spoke:

“Does the magic begin to work?”

She started and tried to stop. Surely it were wiser to go back while she
had the will! But he drew her forward still. The mist overhead was
faintly silver. The moon was rising.

“We will go to the heart of the tangle,” he said. “There is nothing to
fear. The lion himself could not frighten you here.”

Again she yielded to him. There was a suspicion of raillery in his voice
that strangely reassured her. The grasp of his hand was very close.

“We are in the maze,” she said at last, breaking her silence. “Are you
sure of the way?”

He answered her instantly with complete self-assurance.

“Like the heart of a woman, it’s hard, that it is, to find. But I think
I have the key. And if not, by the saints, I’m near enough now to break
through.”

The words thrilled her inexplicably. Truly the magic was swift and
potent. A few more steps, and she was aware of a widening of the hedge.
They were emerging into the centre of the maze.

“Ah,” said the jester, “I thought I should win through!”

He led her forward into the shadow of a great tree. The mist was passing
very slowly from the sky. By the silvery light that filtered down from
the hidden moon Naomi made out the strong outline of his shoulders as he
stood before her, and the vague darkness of his mask.

She put up her free hand and removed her own. The breeze had died down.
The atmosphere was hushed and airless.

“Do you know the way back?” she asked him, in a voice that sounded
unnatural even to herself.

“Do you want to go back, then?” he queried keenly.

There was something in his tone–a subtle something that she had not
detected before. She began to tremble. For the first time, actual fear
took hold of her.

“You must know the way back!” she exclaimed. “This is folly! They will
be wondering where we are.”

“Faith, Lady Una! It is the fool’s paradise,” he told her coolly. “They
will not wonder. They know too well that there is no way back.”

His manner terrified her. Its very quietness seemed a menace.
Desperately she tore herself from his hold, and turned to escape. But it
was as though she fled in a nightmare. Whichever way she turned she met
only the impenetrable ramparts of the hedge that surrounded her. She
could find neither entrance nor exit. It was as though the way by which
she had come had been closed behind her.

But the brightness above was growing. She whispered to herself that she
would soon be able to see, that she could not be a prisoner for long.

Suddenly she heard her captor close to her, and, turning in terror, she
found him erect and dominating against the hedge. With a tremendous
effort she controlled her rising panic to plead with him.

“Indeed, I must go back!” she said, her voice unsteady, but very urgent.
“I have already stayed too long. You cannot wish to keep me here against
my will?”

She saw him shrug his shoulders slightly.

“There is no way back,” he said, “or, if there is, I do not know it.”

There was no dismay in his voice, but neither was there exultation. He
simply stated the fact with absolute composure. Her heart gave a wild
throb of misgiving. Was the man wholly sane?

Again she caught wildly at her failing courage, and drew herself up to
her full height. Perhaps she might awe him, even yet.

“Sir,” she said, “I am Sir Roland Brooke’s wife. And I–”

“Egad!” he broke in banteringly, “that was yesterday. You are free
to-day. I have brought you out of bondage. We have found paradise
together, and, my pretty Lady Una, there is no way back.”

“But there is, there is!” she cried desperately. “And I must find it! I
tell you I am Sir Roland Brooke’s wife. I belong to him. No one can keep
me from him!”

It was as though she beat upon an iron door.

“There is no way out of the magic circle,” said the jester inexorably.

A white shaft of light illumined the mist above them, revealing the
girl’s pale face, making sinister the man’s masked one. He seemed to be
smiling. He bent towards her.

“You seem amazingly fond of your chains,” he said softly. “And yet, from
what I have heard, Sir Roland is no gentle tyrant. How is it, pretty
one? What makes you cling to your bondage so?”

“He is my husband!” she said, through white lips.

“Faith, that is no answer,” he declared. “Own, now, that you hate him,
that you loathe his presence and shudder at his touch! I told you I was
a magician, Lady Una; but you wouldn’t believe me at all.”

She confronted him with a sudden fury that marvellously reinforced her
failing courage.

“You lie, sir!” she cried, stamping passionately upon the soft earth. “I
do none of these things. I have never hated him. I have never shrunk
from his touch. We have not understood each other, perhaps, but that is
a different matter, and no concern of yours.”

“He has not made you happy,” said the jester persistently. “You will
never go back to him now that you are free!”

“I will go back to him!” she cried stormily. “How dare you say such a
thing to me? How dare you?”

He came nearer to her.

“Listen!” he said. “It is deliverance that I am offering you. I ask
nothing at all in return, simply to make you happy, and to teach you the
blessed magic which now you scorn. Faith! It’s the greatest game in the
world, Lady Una; and it only takes two players, dear, only two players!”

There was a subtle, caressing quality in his voice. His masked face was
bending close to hers. She felt trapped and helpless, but she forced
herself to stand her ground.

“You insult me!” she said, her voice quivering, but striving to be calm.

“Never a bit!” he declared. “Since I am the truest friend you have!”

She drew away from him with a gesture of repulsion.

“You insult me!” she said again. “I have my husband, and I need no
other.”

He laughed sneeringly, the insinuating banter all gone from his manner.

“You know he is nothing to you,” he said. “He neglects you. He bullies
you. You married him because you wanted to be a married woman. Be
honest, now! You never loved him. You do not know what love is!”

“It is false!” she cried. “I will not listen to you. Let me go!”

He took a sudden step forward.

“You refuse deliverance?” he questioned harshly.

She did not retreat this time, but faced him proudly.

“I do!”

“Listen!” he said again, and his voice was stern. “Sir Roland Brooke has
returned home. He knows that you have disobeyed him. He knows that you
are here with me. You will not dare to face him. You have gone too far
to return.”

She gasped hysterically, and tottered for an instant, but recovered
herself.

“I will–I will go back!” she said.

“He will beat you like a labourer’s wife,” warned the jester. “He may do
worse.”

She was swaying as she stood.

“He will do–as he sees fit,” she said.

He stooped a little lower.

“I would make you happy, Lady Una,” he whispered. “I would protect
you–shelter you–love you!”

She flung out her hands with a wild and desperate gesture. The
magnetism of his presence had become horrible to her.

“I am going to him–now,” she said.

Behind him she saw, in the brightening moonlight, the opening which she
had vainly sought a few minutes before. She sprang for it, darting past
him like a frightened bird seeking refuge, and in another moment she was
lost in the green labyrinths.

       *       *       *

The moonlight had become clear and strong, casting black shadows all
about her. Twice, in her frantic efforts to escape, she ran back into
the centre of the maze. The jester had gone, but she imagined him
lurking behind every corner, and she impotently recalled his words:
“There is no way out of the magic circle.”

At last, panting and exhausted, she knew that she was unwinding the
puzzle. Often as its intricacies baffled her, she kept her head,
rectifying each mistake and pressing on, till the wider curve told her
that she was very near the entrance. She came upon it finally quite
suddenly, and found herself, to her astonishment, close to the terrace
steps.

She mounted them with trembling limbs, and paused a moment to summon her
composure. Then, outwardly calm, she traversed the terrace and entered
the house.

Lady Blythebury was dancing, and she felt she could not wait. She
scribbled a few hasty words of farewell, and gave them to a servant as
she entered her carriage. Hers was the first departure, and no one
noted it.

She sank back at length, thankfully, in the darkness, and closed her
eyes. Whatever lay before her, she had escaped from the nightmare horror
of the shadowy garden.

But as the brief drive neared its end, her anxiety revived. Had Sir
Roland indeed returned and discovered her absence? Was it possible?

Her face was white and haggard as she entered the hall at last. Her eyes
were hunted.

The servant who opened to her looked at her oddly for a moment.

“What is it?” she said nervously.

“Sir Roland has returned, my lady,” he said. “He arrived two hours ago,
and went straight to his room, saying he would not disturb your
ladyship.”

She turned away in silence, and mounted the stairs. Did he know? Had he
guessed? Was it that that had brought him back?

She entered her room, and dismissed the maid she found awaiting her.

Swiftly she threw off the pink domino, and began to loosen her hair with
stiff, fumbling fingers, then shook it about her shoulders, and sank
quivering upon a couch. She could not go to bed. The terror that
possessed her was too intense, too overmastering.

Ah! What was that? Every pulse in her body leaped and stood still at
sound of a low knock at the door. Who could it be? gasped her fainting
heart. Not Sir Roland, surely! He never came to her room now.

Softly the door opened. It was Sir Roland and none other–Sir Roland
wearing an old velvet smoking–jacket, composed as ever, his grey eyes
very level and inscrutable.

He paused for a single instant upon the threshold, then came noiselessly
in and closed the door.

Naomi sat motionless and speechless. She lacked the strength to rise.
Her hands were pressed upon her heart. She thought its beating would
suffocate her.

He came quietly across the room to her, not seeming to notice her
agitation.

“I should not have disturbed you at this hour if I had not been sure
that you were awake,” he said.

Reaching her, he bent and touched her white cheek.

“Why, child, how cold you are!” he said.

She started violently back, and then, as a sudden memory assailed her,
she caught his hand and held it for an instant.

“It is nothing,” she said with an effort. “You–you startled me.”

“You are nervous tonight,” said Sir Roland.

She shrank under his look.

“You see, I did not expect you,” she murmured.

“Evidently not.” Sir Roland stood gravely considering her. “I came
back,” he said, after a moment, “because it occurred to me that you
might be lonely after all, in spite of your assurance to the contrary.
I did not ask you to accompany me, Naomi. I did not think you would care
to do so. But I regretted it later, and I have come back to remedy the
omission. Will you come with me to Scotland?”

His tone was quiet and somewhat formal, but there was in it a kindliness
that sent the blood pulsing through her veins in a wave of relief even
greater than her astonishment at his words. He did not know, then. That
was her one all-possessing thought. He could not know, or he had not
spoken to her thus.

She sat slowly forward, drawing her hair about her shoulders like a
cloak. She felt for the moment an overpowering weakness, and she could
not look up.

“I will come, of course,” she said at last, her voice very low, “if you
wish it.”

Sir Roland did not respond at once. Then, as his silence was beginning
to disquiet her again, he laid a steady hand upon the shadowing hair.

“My dear,” he said gently, “have you no wishes upon the subject?”

Again she started at his touch, and again, as if to rectify the start,
drew ever so slightly nearer to him. It was many, many days since she
had heard that tone from him.

“My wishes are yours,” she told him faintly.

His hand was caressing her softly, very softly. Again he was silent for
a while, and into her heart there began to creep a new feeling that
made her gradually forget the immensity of her relief. She sat
motionless, save that her head drooped a little lower, ever a little
lower.

“Naomi,” he said, at last, “I have been thinking a good deal lately. We
seem to have been wandering round and round in a circle. I have been
wondering if we could not by any means find a way out?”

She made a sharp, involuntary movement. What was this that he was saying
to her?

“I don’t quite understand,” she murmured.

His hand pressed a little upon her, and she knew that he was bending
down.

“You are not happy,” he said, with grave conviction.

She could not contradict him.

“It is my own fault,” she managed to say, without lifting her head.

“I do not think so,” he returned, “at least, not entirely. I know that
there have frequently been times when you have regretted your marriage.
For that you were not to blame.” He paused an instant. “Naomi,” he said,
a new note in his voice, “I think I am right in believing that,
notwithstanding this regret, you do not in your heart wish to leave me?”

She quivered, and hid her face in silence.

He waited a few seconds, and finally went on as if she had answered in
the affirmative.

“That being so, I have a foundation on which to build. I would not ask
of you anything which you feel unable to grant. But there is only one
way for us to get out of the circle that I can see. Will you take it
with me, Naomi? Shall we go away together, and leave this miserable
estrangement behind us?”

His voice was low and tender. Yet she felt instinctively that he had not
found it easy to expose his most sacred reserve thus. She moved
convulsively, trying to answer him, trying for several unworthy moments
to accept in silence the shelter his generosity had offered her. But her
efforts failed, for she had not been moulded for deception; and this new
weapon of his had cut her to the heart. Heavy, shaking sobs overcame
her.

“Hush!” he said. “Hush! I never dreamed you felt it so.”

“Ah, you don’t know me!” she whispered. “I–I am not what you think me.
I have disobeyed you, deceived you, cheated you!” Humbled to the earth,
she made piteous, halting confession before her tyrant. “I was at the
masquerade tonight. I waltzed–and afterwards went into the maze–in the
dark–with a stranger–who made love to me. I never–meant you–to
know.”

Silence succeeded her words, and, as she waited for him to rise and
spurn her, she wondered how she had ever brought herself to utter them.
But she would not have recalled them even then. He moved at last, but
not as she had anticipated. He gathered the tumbled hair back from her
face, and, bending over her, he spoke. Even in her agony of
apprehension she noted the curious huskiness of his voice.

“And yet you told me,” he said. “Why?”

She could not answer him, nor could she raise her face. He was not
angry, she knew now; but yet she felt that she could not meet his eyes.

There was a short silence, then he spoke again, close to her ear:

“You need not have told me, Naomi.”

The words amazed her. With a great start of bewilderment she lifted her
head and looked at him. He put his hands upon her shoulders. She thought
she saw a smile hovering about his lips, but it was of a species she had
never seen there before.

“Because,” he explained gently, “I knew.”

She stared at him in wonder, scarcely breathing, the tears all gone from
her eyes.

“You–knew!” she said slowly, at last.

“Yes, I knew,” he said. He looked deep into her eyes for seconds, and
then she felt him drawing her irresistibly to him. She yielded herself
as driftwood yields to a racing flood, no longer caring for the
interpretation of the riddle, scarcely remembering its existence; heard
him laugh above her head–a brief, exultant laugh–as he clasped her.
And then came his lips upon her own….

“You see, dear,” he said later, a quiver that was not all laughter in
his voice, “it is not so remarkably wonderful, after all, that I should
know all about it, when you come to consider that I was there–there
with you in the magic circle all the time.”

“You were there!” she echoed, turning in his arms. “But how was it I
never knew? Why did I not see you?”

“Faith, sweetheart, I think you did!” said Sir Roland. Then, at her
quick cry of amazed understanding: “I wanted to teach you a lesson, but,
sure, I’m thinking it’s myself that learned one, after all.” And, as she
clung to him, still hardly believing: “We have found our paradise
together, my Lady Una,” he whispered softly. “And, love, there is no way
back.”

“If he comes my way, I’ll shoot him!” said Dot Burton, her blue eyes
gleaming in her boyish, tanned face. “I’m not such a bad shot, am I,
Jack?”

“Not so bad,” said Jack, kindly. “But don’t shoot at sight, or p’r'aps
you’ll shoot a policeman–which might be awkward for us both!”

“As if I should be such an idiot as that!” protested Dot. “I wasn’t born
yesterday, anyhow.”

“No?” said Jack. “Somehow you look as if you were.”

“Don’t you be a donkey, Jack!” said his young sister, with an impudent
snap of the fingers under his nose. “Being ten years older than I am
doesn’t qualify you for that superior pose. You’re only a man, you know,
after all.”

“Buckskin Bill is only a man, but he’s a pretty tough proposition,” said
Burton, with a frown.

She smoothed the frown away with caressing fingers. “I know. That’s why
I’d like to shoot him. But he’s sure to be caught now, isn’t he? They’ve
got him in a trap. He’ll never wriggle through with Fletcher Hill to
outwit him. You said yourself that with him on the job the odds were dead
against him.”

“Oh, I know. So they are. But he’s such a wily devil. Well, I’d better be
going.” Jack Burton arose with the deliberate movements of a heavy man.
“I’m sick of this business, Dot. If it weren’t for you, I believe I’d
chuck it all and go into business in a town.”

“Oh, darling! How silly!” protested Dot. “What a good thing I came out
when I did! Things seem to be at a rather low ebb with you. But cheer up!
What’s a few head of cattle when all’s said and done? When once this
rascal is laid by the heels, you’ll make up quicker than you know. Of
course you will. Don’t let yourself get downhearted! What is the good?”

He smiled a little. There was something heartening in the girl’s slim
activity of pose apart from her words. She looked indomitable. He pulled
her to him and kissed her.

“Well, take care of yourself, Dot! You won’t be frightened? You needn’t
be. He won’t come your way. Hill has sworn solemnly to keep an extra
guard in this direction. He may call around himself before the day is
over. It wouldn’t surprise me. Don’t shoot him if he does! At least,
give him a feed first!”

“Oh, really, Jack!” the girl protested. “I shall be cross with you before
long. You’d better go quick before it comes on.”

She put her arms around his neck and gave him a tight hug. Her sunburnt
face was pressed to his. “Now, you won’t do anything silly?” she urged
him, softly. “I don’t like parting with you in this mood. I wish I were
coming too.”

“Rubbish! Rubbish!” he said. “You stay at home, little shepherdess, and
look after the lambs! I won’t be late back. Mind you are civil to
Fletcher Hill if he turns up! He’ll be a magistrate one of these days if
he plays his cards well.”

“If he catches the biggest cattle-thief in Australia?” suggested Dot,
screwing her face into a very boyish grimace. “I wouldn’t care to get
promotion for that job, if I were a man. But I’ll be vastly polite to him
if he turns up. You’ve never seen me doing the pretty, have you? But I
can–awfully well–when I try.”

Her brother laughed. “Oh, don’t be too pretty, my child! It’s a dangerous
game. Good-bye! Don’t go far away!”

“My dear man! As if I should have time!” ejaculated Dot.

She gave him another squeeze and let him go.

There were a great many things to be done that day, things which a mere
ignorant male would never have dreamt of. There was bread to be baked, an
evening meal to be prepared, countless household duties waiting to be
done, and work enough in Jack’s wardrobe alone to keep an ordinary woman
busy for a week. Poor Jack! He was not a great hand at needlework. She
had been shocked at the state in which she had found him. But she had not
shirked her responsibilities. And more than ever was she glad now that
she had come to him. For he needed her in a moral sense as well. She was
too much of a “new chum” to help him in any very active sense outside the
homestead at present. But he needed a good deal of moral backing just at
that moment. She had come to him straight from England, and full of
enthusiasm. He had hewn his own way and begun to enjoy prosperity. But
she had arrived to find that prosperity temporarily checked. A gang of
cattle-thieves were making serious depredations among his stock.

The police were hot on the trail, and it was believed that the gang had
been split up, but so far no notable captures had been made. Buckskin
Bill, the leader, was still at large, and while this remained the case
there could be no security for any one. Every farmer in the district was
keen on the chase, expecting to fall a victim.

And–there was no doubt about it–Buckskin Bill was in a very tight
corner. Inspector Hill had the matter in hand, and he was not a man to
be lightly baffled. Jack regarded him with wholehearted admiration. But
somehow Dot, the new arrival, felt curiously prejudiced against him. She
wanted Buckskin Bill to be caught, but she could not help hoping that
this astute Inspector of Police would not be his captor. She was sure
from Jack’s description that she would not like the man, and as she went
about her work she earnestly hoped that he would not come her way, at
least in her brother’s absence.

She was busy indoors during the whole of the morning. As midday
approached the heat became intense. Jack usually returned for a meal at
noon, but she was not expecting him that day. He had joined the chase,
and had taken with him every available man. She might have felt lonely
if she had not been so engrossed. As it was, she hummed cheerily to
herself as she went to and fro. There were so many things to think about,
and it was such an interesting world in which she found herself.

In the early afternoon she went out to feed a few motherless lambs that
her brother had placed in her charge. She stood in the shelter of a great
barn with the little things clustering around her, while Robin, the old
black hound, lay watching and snapping at the flies. Miles and miles of
pasture stretched around her, broken here and there by thick scrub and
occasional groups of blue gum trees.

The hot glare of the afternoon sun made the eyes ache, and she was glad
when her task was over. When she stood up at length she was feeling a
little giddy, and she leaned for a moment against the barn wall to steady
herself. A rank growth of grass grew all about her feet, and as she stood
there gazing rather dizzily downwards she saw a ripple pass along it
close to the building.

Any but a “new chum” would have known the meaning of that small
disturbance, for there was no breath of air to cause it. Any but a “new
chum,” being quite defenceless, would have beaten instant and swift
retreat.

But Dot Burton in her inexperience had no thought of evil. She was only
curious. She forgot her weariness, and bent down to watch the moving
grass.

At the same moment Robin suddenly raised his head and looked keenly in
the direction of the farm, with a growl. The girl barely heard him, so
interested was she. She even stooped and parted the tall grass with her
hands when unexpectedly it ceased to move.

The next instant she started back with a wild cry of horror. For it was
as if the grass itself had suddenly come to malignant life under her
hands. A shape–long, thin, vividly green–rose up before her, and swayed
with an angry hiss.

Her cry seemed to galvanize Robin into action, for he sprang up fiercely
barking, but his attention was not directed towards her. He leapt instead
towards the house, yelling resentment as he went. And in a flash the
green evil struck at the bare brown arm!

Dot shrieked again, shrieked like a demented creature, and in a moment,
with hands flung wide, she was fleeing across the sun-baked yard.

She reached the open door immediately behind Robin, and sprang in
headlong. Robin had ceased to bark, and was fawning at the feet of a man
who had evidently just entered. He was bent down over the dog, fondling
him with one hand. In the other something bright gleamed, and as he
straightened himself the girl saw that it was a revolver; but she was too
agitated to take much note of the fact.

She burst in upon him in breathless, horrified distress. “I’ve been
bitten!” she cried to him. “Bitten by a snake!”

“Where?” he said.

He had her by the arm in a second and was pushing up the loose holland
sleeve. Later she marvelled at his promptitude, his instant intuition.
At the moment she was too terrified, too near collapse, to notice any of
these things.

He pushed her down upon a chair and knelt beside her. She found herself
staring down at a shock of straw-coloured hair, while the owner of it
sucked and sucked with an almost brutal force at a place in the crook of
her arm that felt as if a red-hot needle had been plunged into it. She
could feel the drawing of his teeth against her flesh. It was a sensation
almost more horrible than the actual snake-bite had been.

Twice he turned his head and spat into the hearth, and she saw that his
face was smooth and young, the colour of sun-baked brick.

At last he looked up at her with the most extraordinarily blue eyes she
had ever seen, and said, with a kindly twinkle in them, “I don’t think
you’ll die this time, missis.”

She looked from him to her arm. The bite showed no more than the sting of
a nettle, but around it was the deep impress of his teeth. Certainly he
had done his task thoroughly.

The kettle was singing over the fire. He got to his feet and patted Robin
on the head. “Let’s wash it,” he said. “Is there a basin handy?”

Dot sat in her chair, feeling rather weak. He fetched a bowl and set it
on a chair by her side. He poured water into it from the kettle.

She looked up at him rather apprehensively. “I needn’t scald it, need I?”

He smiled down at her in instant reassurance, a vivid smile that warmed
her fear-chilled heart. His teeth were white and regular, like the teeth
of a young wild animal.

“There’s some cold water somewhere, isn’t there?” he said.

She told him where to find it, and he cooled the steaming water to a
temperature that she could endure without flinching. Then he made her
rest her arm in it.

“That’ll comfort it,” he said. “Now, have you got any spirits in the
house?”

“I don’t drink spirits,” she said quickly.

He smiled again. “No? But you must this time–just to complete the cure.
Tell me where to find them!”

His smile was certainly magnetic, for she told him without further
protest.

When he brought the spirits, she looked at him for the first time with
active interest.

“I suppose you are Inspector Hill,” she said.

He was pouring whisky into a glass. He gave her a sidelong glance. “Now
that’s a very clever guess,” he said. “What put you on to that?”

She smiled, mainly because he had meant her to smile. “I’ve been half
expecting you all day,” she said.

He looked down at her more fully as he finished his task. “That’s very
interesting,” he said. “Who told you to expect me?”

“My brother–Jack Burton,” she explained.

“Oh! Jack Burton is your brother, is he?” He contemplated her
thoughtfully for a second or two. “Well, I seem to have turned up
at the right moment,” he said.

“Yes.” She leaned forward with flushed face upraised. “And I haven’t said
‘Thank you’ yet. I’m so grateful to you. I can’t tell you how grateful.”

“Don’t!” he said. “Don’t! Drink this instead! Drink to the lucky chance
that sent me your way! I’m proud to have been of use to you.”

She took the glass unwillingly. “I’m sure I shall hate it.”

“It’s the best antidote to snake-poison out,” he said. “I swear it won’t
upset you. If it makes you sleepy, well, you’re in the right place and
safe enough.”

She liked his utterance of the last words. They had a genuine ring. “But,
if I drink, so must you!” she said. “And eat, too! Jack said I was to
give you a meal if you came.”

He smiled again, a large, humorous smile. “That’s the kindest thing Jack
Burton has ever done,” he said, with warm approval. “I’ll join you with
pleasure, missis. This man-trapping business is hungry work for all of
us.”

Dot frowned a little. It did not please her to be reminded of his
mission. Her former prejudice began to revive within her, his kindness
notwithstanding.

“I don’t like the thought of it myself,” she told him abruptly. “But, of
course, I’m only a ‘new chum.’”

“What?” he said, pausing in the act of pouring himself out a drink. “That
sounds as if you want that scoundrel Bill to get away.”

She coloured in some confusion under his look. How could she expect to
make a policeman understand? “No–no!” she said, with vehemence. “I’m not
quite so soft as that. I’d shoot him myself if he came my way. But I hate
to think of a dozen men all on the track of one. It really isn’t fair.”

He laughed, but without superiority. “And yet you’d swell the odds? Do
you call that fair?”

Dot paused to collect her arguments. It seemed that possibly even this
machine of justice carried a small fragment of sympathy in his soul.
Certainly he was not the judicial automaton she had expected him to be.

“It’s like this,” she said. “I’d shoot him if he came my way because
he has done us a lot of mischief, and I want to stop it. But I’d
do it squarely. I wouldn’t do it when he wasn’t looking. And I
wouldn’t–ever–make it my profession to hunt down criminals and even
employ black men to help. I think that’s hateful. I couldn’t live that
way. I’d be above it.”

“I see.” He lifted his glass to her in a silent toast, and drank a deep
draught. “Then if you chanced to know where he was, I take it you’d just
settle him yourself, if you could. But you wouldn’t in any case give him
away to the police. Is that your point of view?”

“It isn’t unreasonable, is it?” she said, with a touch of eagerness. “I
mean, if you weren’t what you are, wouldn’t you do the same?”

“I don’t know,” he said, smiling at her whimsically. “You see, being what
I am handicaps me rather. I haven’t much time for working out nice
problems.”

Dot leaned back again. He had disappointed her. But she could not neglect
her duty on that account. She took her arm out of the water and dried it.
Then she arose.

“How does it feel?” he said.

“Oh, only a little stiff,” she answered, turning away. “Now I am going to
get you something to eat. Sit down, won’t you?”

Her tone was distant, but he did not seem to notice any change. He
thanked her and sat down, facing the open door. Robin sat pressed against
his knee. It was evident that the dog entertained no doubts regarding the
visitor. Having passed him as respectable, he accepted him without
reserve.

This fact presently occurred to Dot as she waited upon her visitor, and,
since it was not her nature to prolong an uncomfortable situation, she
broke the silence to comment upon it.

“He doesn’t take to everyone at sight,” she said.

“No?” She saw again that frank, disarming smile. “You see, missis, I know
the ways of animals, and a very useful sort of knowledge I’ve found it.”

“I wonder why you call me missis,” she said. “I’m Jack’s sister, not his
wife.”

He looked up at her. “But you’re the boss of the establishment, I take
it?”

She smiled also half against her will. “I’m rather new at present. But no
doubt I shall learn.”

“And then you’ll go and boss some one else?” he suggested.

She coloured a little. “No. I shall stick to Jack,” she said, with
decision.

“Lucky Jack!” he said. “But you’re quite right. There’s no one good
enough for you around here. We’re a low breed mostly.”

“I didn’t mean that!” she protested, in quick distress. “I never thought
that!”

“I know,” he said. “I know. But you’ve sort of felt it all the same. Me,
for instance!” His intensely blue eyes challenged her suddenly. “Haven’t
you said to yourself, ‘That man may be up to local standard, but he’s
made of shocking crude material’? Straight now! Haven’t you?”

She hesitated, her face burning under his direct look. “Do you–do you
really want to know what I think?” she said.

“I do.” There was something uncompromising in the brief rejoinder, yet
somehow she did not find him formidable.

She answered him without difficulty in spite of her embarrassment. “I
think, then, that it isn’t you yourself at all that I feel like that
about. It’s just your profession.”

“Ah!” He began to smile again. “Once live down that, and I might be
possible. Is that it?”

She nodded, still flushed, yet curiously not uneasy. “Something like
that. Why can’t you be a farmer like Jack?”

“I wish I were,” he said, unexpectedly.

“Why?” The word slipped out almost in spite of her, but she felt she must
have an answer.

He answered her with his eyes full on her. “Because I’d like to lead the
sort of life you would approve of,” he said. “I’ve a notion it would be
worth while.”

She turned aside from his look. “It’s only a matter of opinion, of
course,” she said.

“Is it?” he said. He turned his attention to the meal before him, and ate
rapidly for a few moments while he considered the matter. At length:
“Yes,” he said. “I suppose you’re right. Anyhow, you don’t feel drawn
that way. You won’t feel a bit pleased if Buckskin Bill gets caught by
the police this journey after this?”

Dot shook her head. “I don’t think a man ought to be tracked down like a
wild beast,” she said, resolutely.

The blue eyes that watched her kindled a little. He finished what was on
his plate and pushed it from him.

“I’m greatly obliged to you,” he said, “for your hospitality. I needed
it–badly enough. You’ll thank Jack for me, won’t you? I must be going
now. But there’s just one thing I’d like to say to you first.”

He got up and stood before her. It was impossible not to admire his
splendid height and breadth of chest. He could have lifted her easily
with one hand. And yet, strangely, though she felt his power he did not
make her aware of her own weakness.

She looked up at him. “Yes? What is it?”

“Just this, Miss Burton,” he said, and somehow he lingered over the name
in a fashion that made it sound musical in her ears. “I’d like to strike
a bargain with you–because you’ve made a sort of impression on me. I’m
not meaning any impertinence. You know that?”

“Go on!” she whispered, almost inaudibly.

He went on, bending slightly towards her. “The odds are dead against
Buckskin Bill escaping, but–he may escape. If he does, will you–the
next time I come to see you–treat me–without prejudice?”

He also was almost whispering as he uttered the last words.

She drew a sharp breath and looked at him. “You–you–are going to let
him go?” she said, incredulously.

He did not answer. His eyes were drawing hers with a magnetism she could
not resist. And they thrilled her–they thrilled her!

“The odds are dead against him,” he said again, after a moment. “Is it–a
bargain?”

Her heart gave a queer little jerk within her. She stood motionless for
a space. Then, with a little quivering smile, she very, very slowly gave
him her hand.

He took it into his great brown one, and though his touch was wholly
gentle she felt the force of the man throbbing behind it, and it seemed
to surge all around and within her.

He stood for a second as if irresolute or uncertain how to treat her.
Then, with a wordless sound that needed no interpretation, he pushed
back the sleeve from the place whence he had sucked the poison. It showed
only a little red now. He bent very low until his lips pressed it again.
Then for one burning moment they neither moved nor breathed.

The next thing that Dot realized was the passing of his great figure
through the doorway out of her sight. She saw him don his slouch hat as
he went.

       *       *       *       *       *

She cleared the table again and sat down to her work. But somehow all
energy had gone from her. A great lassitude hung upon her. Perhaps it was
caused by the heat, or possibly by the whisky he had made her drink.
There was no resisting it. It pressed her down like a physical weight.
She gave herself up to it at last, and leaning back in her chair like a
tired child she slept.

Robin lay at her feet. The afternoon crawled away. Like the enchanted
princess of old, she reclined in a slumber so deep that life itself
seemed to be suspended.

The sun began to slant towards the west, and the pastures took on a
golden look. The lambs gambolled together with shrill bleatings. But
Dot Burton slept on in her chair, a faint smile on her face of innocence.
Though she could not have been dreaming in so deep a repose, her last
thought ere she slept must have held happiness. Her serenity lay like a
tender veil upon her.

It was drawing towards evening when Robin suddenly raised his head again
with a deep growl. There came the sound of footsteps through the open
door. The girl stirred and slowly awoke.

She stretched up her arms with a sleepy movement, and then, as voices
reached her, roused herself completely and got to her feet.

Her brother and another man–a tall, lantern-jawed stranger–were on the
point of entering.

Jack led the way. “Halloa, Dot!” he said. “Have you seen anything of our
man? He’s broken cover in this direction in spite of us. You haven’t shot
him by any chance, I suppose?”

Dot looked from him to the man behind him.

“Inspector Hill,” said Jack. “Eh? What’s the matter?”

“Nothing–nothing!” said Dot. Yet she had gone back a step as if she had
been struck. She held out her hand to the policeman. “How do you do?
I–I–am very pleased to meet you. So you haven’t caught him after all?”

Inspector Hill was looking at her keenly. He wore a sardonic expression,
as of one who knows that he has been outwitted. “I have not, madam,”
he said. “Neither, I presume, have you?”

She shook her head, looking him straight in the face. “No, I haven’t.
I am afraid I have been asleep. Are you sure he passed this way?”

Her eyes were clear and candid as the eyes of a boy. Inspector Hill
turned his own away.

“Yes. Quite sure,” he said, with brevity.

“He’s a slippery devil,” declared Jack Burton. “Sit down, man! My sister
is a ‘new chum.’ She probably wouldn’t have known him from a man on the
farm if she’d seen him. In fact, if you’d turned up here by yourself she
might have shot you–on suspicion.”

“I probably should,” said Dot, coldly.

She did not like Inspector Hill, and her manner plainly said so.

At her brother’s behest she set food before them, for they were hot and
jaded after their fruitless day; but she left the duties of host entirely
to him, and as soon as possible she went away with Robin to feed the
lambs.

A wonderful glow lay upon the grasslands. It was as if she moved through
a magic atmosphere upon which some enchantment had been laid. Since that
wonderful sleep of hers all things seemed to have changed. Had it all
been a dream? she asked herself. Then, shuddering, she turned up her
sleeve to find that small red patch upon her arm.

She found it. It tingled to her touch. Yet she continued to finger it
with a curious feeling that was almost awe. She thought it must be the
memory of his kiss that made it throb so hard.

Some one came softly up behind her. An arm encircled her. She turned with
the day-dream still in her eyes and saw her brother.

She pulled down her sleeve quickly, for though his face was kind, he
seemed to look at her oddly, almost with suspicion.

“Had a quiet day?” he questioned, gently.

She leaned against his shoulder, feeling small and rather uncomfortable.
“I–I was very busy all the morning,” she said, evasively.

“And in the afternoon?” he said.

She nestled to him with a little coaxing movement. “In the afternoon,”
she told him softly, “I went to sleep.”

“Yes?” he said.

“That’s all,” said Dot, lifting her face to kiss him.

He took her chin and held it while he looked long and searchingly into
her eyes.

“Dot!” he said.

She made a little gesture of protest, but he held her still.

“Dot, tell me what has been happening!” he said.

She had begun to tremble. “I’ll tell you,” she said, “when Inspector Hill
has gone.”

“Tell me now!” he said.

But she shook her head with tightly compressed lips.

“You have seen the man!” he said.

Dot remained silent.

His face grew grim. “Dot! Shall I tell you what Hill said to me just
now?”

“If you like,” whispered Dot.

“He said, ‘She has seen the man, and he has squared her. It’s a way he
has with the women. You’ll find she won’t give him away.’”

That stung, as it was meant to sting. She flinched under it. “I hate
Inspector Hill!” she said, with vehemence.

He smiled a little. “I don’t suppose that fact would upset him much. A
good many people don’t exactly love him. But look here, Dot! You’re not
a fool. At least, I hope not. You can’t seriously wish to shield a thief.
Only this morning you were going to shoot him!”

“Ah!” she said. And then suddenly she pulled up her sleeve and showed him
the mark upon her arm. “But he has saved my life since then,” she said.

“What?” said Jack. He caught her arm and looked at it. “You’ve had a
snake-bite!” he said.

“Yes, Jack.”

His eyes went back to her face. “Why didn’t you tell me before? What kind
of snake was it?”

She told him, shuddering. “A horrible green thing–green as the grass. I
think it had some black marking on its back. I’m not sure. I didn’t stop
to see. I–oh, Jack!” She broke off in swift consternation. “There is a
dead lamb!”

“Ah!” said Jack, and strode across to the barn where it lay, stark and
lifeless in the shade in which it had taken refuge from the afternoon
heat.

“Oh, Jack!” cried Dot, in distress. “What can have happened to it?
Not–not that hateful snake?”

“Not much doubt as to that,” said Jack, grimly. “No, don’t look too
close! It’s not a pretty sight. And don’t cry, child! What’s the good?”

He drew her away, his arm around her, holding her closely, comforting
her. “It might have been you,” he said.

She lifted her wet face from his shoulder. “It was–it would have
been–but for–”

“All right,” he interrupted. “Don’t say any more!”

       *       *       *       *       *

He left her to recover herself and went back to Fletcher Hill,
sardonically awaiting him.

“On a wrong scent this time,” he said. “She’s lost one of the lambs from
snake-bite, and it’s upset her. She’s a ‘new chum,’ you know.”

“I know,” said Inspector Hill.

Jack Burton leaned upon the table and looked him in the eyes. “My sister
is not a detective,” he said, warningly. “Buckskin Bill has been one too
many for us this time. The odds were dead against him, but he’s slipped
through. And I’ve a pretty firm notion he won’t come back.”

“So have I,” said Inspector Hill, unmoved.

“And a blasted good job too!” said Jack Burton, forcibly.

A gleam of humour crossed the Inspector’s face. He pulled out his pipe
with a gesture that made for peace.

“If I were in your place,” he said, “I daresay I’d say the same.”

I

“He hasn’t proposed, then?”

“No; he hasn’t.” A pause; then, reluctantly: “I haven’t given him the
opportunity.”

“Violet! Do you want to starve?”

The speaker turned in his chair, and looked at the girl bending over the
fire, with a quick, impatient frown on his handsome face. They were
twins, these two, the only representatives of a family that had been
wealthy three generations before them, but whose resources had dwindled
steadily under the management of three successive spendthrifts, and had
finally disappeared altogether in a desperate speculation which had
promised to restore everything.

“You don’t seem to realise,” the young man said, “that we are absolutely
penniless–destitute. Everything is sunk in this Winhalla Railway
scheme, up to the last penny. It seemed a gorgeous chance at the time.
It ought to have brought in thousands. It would have done, too, if it
had been properly supported. But it’s no good talking about that. It’s
just a gigantic failure, or, if it ever does succeed, it will come too
late to help us. Just our infernal luck! And now the question is, what
is going to be done? You’ll have to marry that fellow, Violet. It’s
absolutely the only thing for you to do. And I–I suppose I must
emigrate.”

The girl did not turn her head. There was something tense about her
attitude.

“I could emigrate too, Jerry,” she said, in a low voice.

“You!” Her brother turned more fully round. “You!” he said again. “Are
you mad, I wonder?”

She made a slight gesture of protest.

“Why shouldn’t I?” she said. “At least, we should be together.”

He uttered a grim laugh, and rose.

“Look here, Violet,” he said, and took her lightly by the shoulders.
“Don’t be a little fool! You know as well as I do that you weren’t made
to rough it. The suggestion is so absurd that it isn’t worth discussion.
You’ll have to marry Kenyon. It’s as plain as daylight; and I only wish
my perplexities were as easily solved. Come! He isn’t such a bad sort;
and, anyhow, he’s better than starvation.”

The girl stood up slowly and faced him. Her eyes were wild, like the
eyes of a hunted creature.

“I hate him, Jerry! I hate him!” she declared vehemently.

“Nonsense!” said Jerry. “He’s no worse than a hundred others. You’d hate
any one under these abominable circumstances!”

She shuddered, as if in confirmation of this statement.

“I’d rather do anything,” she said; “anything, down to selling matches
in the gutter.”

“Which isn’t a practical point of view,” pointed out Jerry. “You would
get pneumonia with the first east wind, and die.”

“Well, then, I’d rather die.” The girl’s voice trembled with the
intensity of her preference. But her brother frowned again at the words.

“Don’t!” he said abruptly. “For Heaven’s sake, don’t be unreasonable!
Can’t you see that it’s my greatest worry to get you provided for? You
must marry. You can’t live on charity.”

Her cheeks flamed.

“But I can work,” she began. “I can—-”

He interrupted her impatiently.

“You can’t. You haven’t the strength, and probably not the ability
either. It’s no use talking this sort of rot. It’s simply silly, and
makes things worse for both of us. It’s all very well to say you’d
rather starve, but when it comes to starving, as it will–as it
must–you’ll think differently. Look here, old girl: if you won’t marry
this fellow for your own sake, do it for mine. I hate it just as much as
you do. But it’s bearable, at least. And–there are some things I can’t
bear.”

He stopped. She was clinging to him closely, beseechingly; but he stood
firm and unyielding, his young face set in hard lines.

“Will you do it?” he said, as she did not speak.

“Jerry!” she said imploringly.

He stiffened to meet the appeal he dreaded. But it did not come. Her
eyes were raised to his, and she seemed to read there the futility of
argument. She remained absolutely still for some seconds, then abruptly
she turned from him and burst into tears.

“Don’t! don’t!” he said.

He stepped close to her, as she leaned upon the mantelpiece, all the
hardness gone from his face. Had she known it, the battle at that moment
might have been hers; for he would have insisted no longer. He was on
the brink of abandoning the conflict. But her anguish of weeping
possessed her to the exclusion of everything else.

“Oh, Jerry, go away!” she sobbed passionately. “You’re a perfect beast,
and I’m another! But I’ll do it, I’ll do it–for your sake, as I would
do anything in the world, though it’s quite true that I’d rather
starve!”

And Jerry, rather pale, but otherwise complete master of himself, patted
her shoulder with a hasty assumption of kindly approval; and told her
that he had always known she was a brick.

II

“Heaven knows I don’t aspire to be any particular ornament to society,”
said Dick Kenyon modestly. “Never have; though I’ve been pretty well
everything else that you can think of, from cow-puncher to millionaire.
And I can tell you there’s a dashed deal more fun in being the first
than the last of those. Still, I think I could make you comfortable if
you would have me; though, if you don’t want to, just say so, and I’ll
shunt till further notice.”

It was thus that he made his proposal to the girl of his choice; and no
one, hearing it, would have guessed that beneath his calm, even
phlegmatic, exterior, the man was in a ferment of anxiety. He spoke with
a slight nasal twang that seemed to emphasise his deliberation, and his
face was mask-like in its composure. Of beauty he had none.

His eyes were extraordinarily blue, but the lids drooped over them so
heavily that his expression was habitually drowsy, even stolid. In
build, he was short and thick-set, like a bulldog; and there seemed to
be something of a bulldog’s strength in the breadth of his chest, though
there was no hint of energy about him to warrant its development.

The girl he addressed did not look at him. She sat perfectly still, with
her hands fast clasped together, and her eyes, wide and despairing,
fixed upon the fire in front of her. She was wondering desperately how
long she could possibly endure it. Yet his last words were somehow not
what she had expected from this man whose manner always seemed to hint
that at least half of creation was at his sole disposal. They expressed
a consideration on his part that she had been far from anticipating. He
waited for an interval of several seconds for her to speak. He was
standing up on the hearthrug, his ill-proportioned figure thrown into
strong relief by the firelight behind him. At last, as she quite failed
to answer him, he drew a pace nearer to her.

“Don’t mind me, Miss Trelevan,” he said, in a drawl so exaggerated that
she thought it must be intentional. “Take your time. There’s no hurry.
I’ve always thought it was a bit hard on a woman to expect her to answer
an offer of marriage offhand. Perhaps you’d rather write?”

“No,” she said, rather breathlessly. “No!” Then, after a pause, still
more breathlessly: “Won’t you sit down?”

He stepped away from her again, to her infinite relief, and sat down a
couple of yards away.

There ensued a most painful silence, during which the battle in the
girl’s heart raged fiercely. Then at length she took her resolution in
both hands, and faced him. He was not looking at her. He sat quite
still, and she fancied that his eyes were closed; but when she spoke he
turned his head, and she realised that she had been mistaken.

“I can give you your answer now,” she said, making the greatest effort
of her life. “It is–it is–yes.”

She rose with the words, almost as if in preparation for headlong
flight. But Dick Kenyon kept his seat. He leaned forward a little, his
blue eyes lifted to her face.

“Your final word, Miss Trelevan?” he asked her, in his cool, easy twang.

She wrung her hands together with an unconscious gesture of despair.

“Yes,” she said; and added feverishly: “of course.”

“You think you’ve met the right man?” he pursued, his tone one of gentle
inquiry, as if he were speaking to a child.

She nodded. She was white to the lips.

“Yes,” she said again.

He got up then with extreme deliberation.

“Well,” he said, a curious smile flickering about his mouth, “that’s
about the biggest surprise I’ve ever had. And I don’t mind telling you
so. Sure now that you’re not making a mistake?”

She uttered a little laugh that sounded hysterical.

“Oh, don’t!” she said. “Don’t! I have given you my answer!”

“And I’m to take you seriously?” questioned Kenyon. “Very well. I will.
But you mustn’t be frightened.”

He stretched out a steady hand, and laid it on her shoulder. She
quivered at his touch, but she did not attempt to resist.

“Don’t be scared,” he said very gently. “I know I’m as ugly as blazes;
at least, I’ve been told so, but there’s nothing else to alarm you if
you can once get over that.”

There was a note of quaint raillery in his voice. He did not try to draw
her to him. Yet she was conscious of a strength that did battle with her
half-instinctive aversion–a strength that might have compelled, but
preferred to attract.

Unwillingly, at length, she looked at him, meeting his eyes,
good-humouredly critical, watching her.

“I am not frightened,” she said, with an effort. “It’s only that–just
at first–till I get used to it–it feels rather strange.”

There was unconscious pleading in her voice. He took his hand from her
shoulder, looking at her with his queer, speculative smile.

“I don’t want to hustle you any,” he said. “But if that’s all the
trouble, I guess I know a remedy.”

Violet drew back sharply.

“Oh, no!” she said. “No!”

She was terrified for the moment lest he should desire to put his remedy
to the test. But he made no movement in her direction, and another sort
of misgiving assailed her.

“Don’t be vexed,” she said unsteadily. “I–I know I’m despicable. But I
shall get over it–if you will give me time.”

“Bless your heart, I’m not vexed,” said Kenyon. “I’m only wondering,
don’t you know, how you brought yourself to say ‘Yes’ to me. But no
matter, dear. I’m grateful all the same.”

He held out his hand to her, and she laid hers nervously within it. She
could not meet his eyes any longer.

Kenyon stooped and put his lips to her cold fingers.

“Jove!” he said softly. “I’m in luck to-day.”

And after that he sat down again, and began to behave like an ordinary
visitor.

III

“Great Scotland!” said Jerry.

He looked up from a letter, and gazed at his sister with starting eyes.

“Oh, what?” she exclaimed in alarm.

He sprang up impetuously, and went round the table to her. They were
breakfasting in the tiny flat which was theirs for but three short
months longer.

“Guess!” he said. “No, don’t! I can’t wait. It’s the family luck, old
girl, turned at last! It’s the original gorgeous chance again with a
practical dead certainty pushing behind. It’s the Winhalla Railway
turning up trumps just in time.”

And, with a whoop that might have been heard from garret to basement,
Jerry swept his sister from her chair, and waltzed her giddily round the
little room till she cried breathlessly for mercy.

“Oh, but do tell me!” she gasped, when he set her down again. “I want to
understand, Jerry. Don’t be so mad. Tell me exactly what has happened!”

“I’ll tell you,” said Jerry, sitting down on the tablecloth. “It’s a
letter from Gardner–my broker and man of business generally–written
last night to tell me that one of these swaggering capitalists has got
hold of the Winhalla Railway scheme, and is going to make things hum.
Shares are going up already; and they’ll run sky high by the end of the
week. It’s bound to be all right. It was always sound enough. It only
wanted capital. He doesn’t tell me the bounder’s name, but that’s no
matter. I don’t want to go into partnership. I shall sell, sell, sell,
at the top of the boom. Gardner’s to be trusted. He’ll know–and
then–and then—-”

“Yes; what does it mean?” the girl broke in. “I want to know exactly,
Jerry!”

“Mean?” he echoed, his hands upon her shoulders. “It means emancipation,
wealth, everything we’ve lost back again, and more to it! Now do you
understand?”

She gasped for breath. She had turned very pale.

“Oh, Jerry!” she said tragically. “Jerry, why didn’t this happen
before?”

He stared at her for a moment. Then, as understanding came to him, he
frowned with swift impatience.

“Oh, that must be broken off!” he said. “You can’t marry that fellow
now. Why should you?”

Violet shook her head hopelessly.

“I’ve promised,” she said; “promised to marry him at the end of next
month.”

Jerry jumped up impulsively.

“But that’s soon arranged,” he declared. “Leave it to me. I’ll explain.”

“How can you?” questioned Violet.

“I shall put it on a purely business footing,” he returned airily.
“Don’t you worry yourself. He isn’t the sort of chap to take it to
heart. You know that as well as I do. Perhaps it might be as well to
wait till the end of the week and make sure of things, though, before I
say anything.”

But at this point Violet gave him the biggest surprise he had ever
known. She sprang to her feet with flashing eyes.

“Indeed you won’t, Jerry!” she exclaimed. “You will tell him
to-day–this morning–and end it definitely. Never mind what happens
afterwards. I won’t carry the dishonourable bargain to that length. I’ve
little enough self-respect left, but what there is of it I’ll keep!”

“Heavens above!” ejaculated Jerry, in amazement. “What’s the matter now?
I was only thinking of you, after all.”

“I know you were,” she answered passionately. “But you’re to think of
something greater than my physical welfare. You’re to think of my
miserable little rag of honour, and do what you can for that, if you
really want to help me!”

And with that she went quickly from the room and left him to breakfast
alone.

He marvelled for a little at her agitation, and then the contents of the
letter absorbed him again. He had better go and see Gardner, he
reflected; and then, if the thing really seemed secure, he would take
Dick Kenyon on his way back–perhaps lunch with him, and explain matters
in a friendly way. There was certainly nothing for Violet to make a fuss
about. He was quite fully convinced that the fellow wouldn’t care.
Marriage was a mere incident to men of his stamp.

So, cheerily at length, having disposed of his breakfast, he rose,
collected his correspondence, which consisted for the most part of
bills, and, whistling light-heartedly, took his departure.

IV

“Now,” said Dick Kenyon, in his easy, self-assured accents, “sit down
right there, sonny, and tell me what’s on your mind.”

He pressed Jerry into his most comfortable chair with hospitable force.

Jerry submitted, because he could not help himself, rather than from
choice. Patronage from Dick Kenyon was something of an offence to his
ever-ready pride.

As for Dick, he had not apparently the smallest suspicion of any latent
resentment of this nature in his visitor’s mind. He brought out a box of
choice cigars, and set them at Jerry’s elbow. They had just lunched
together at Kenyon’s rooms; and it had been quite obvious to the latter
that Jerry had been preoccupied throughout the meal.

Having furnished his guest with everything he could think of to ensure
his comfort, he proceeded deliberately to provide for his own.

Jerry was not quite at his ease. He sat with the unlighted cigar between
his fingers, considering with bent brows. Kenyon looked at him at last
with a faint smile.

“If I didn’t know it to be an impossibility,” he said, “I should say you
were shying at something.”

Jerry turned towards him with an air of resolution.

“Look here, Kenyon,” he said, in his slightly superior tones, “I have
really come to talk to you about your engagement to my sister.”

He paused, aware of a change in Kenyon’s expression, but wholly unable
to discover of what it consisted.

“What about it?” said Kenyon.

He was on his feet, searching the mantelpiece for an ash-tray. His face
was turned from Jerry, but could he have seen it fully, it would have
told him nothing.

Jerry went on, with a strong effort to maintain his ease of manner:

“We’ve been thinking it over, and we have come to the conclusion that
perhaps, after all, it was a mistake. In short, my sister has thought
better of it; and, as she is naturally sensitive on the subject, I
undertook to tell you so, I don’t suppose it will make any particular
difference to you. There are plenty of girls who would jump at the
chance of marrying your millions. But, of course, if you wish it, some
compensation could be made.”

Jerry paused again. He had placed the matter on the most businesslike
footing that had occurred to him. Of course, the man must realise that
he was a rank outsider, and would understand that it was the best
method.

Kenyon heard him out in dead silence. He had found the ash-tray, but he
did not turn his head. After several dumb seconds, he walked across the
room to the window, and stood there. Finally he spoke.

“I don’t suppose,” he said, in his calm, expressionless drawl, “that you
have ever had a cowhiding in your life, have you?”

“What?” said Jerry.

He stared at Kenyon in frank amazement. Was the man mad?

“Never had a cowhiding in your life, eh?” repeated Kenyon, without
moving.

“What do you mean?” exclaimed Jerry.

Kenyon remained motionless.

“I mean,” he said calmly, “that I’ve thrashed a man to a pulp before now
for a good deal less than you have just offered me. It’s my special
treatment for curs. Suits ‘em wonderfully. And suits me, too.”

Jerry sprang to his feet in a whirl of wrath, but before he could utter
a word Kenyon suddenly turned.

“Go back to your sister,” he said, in curt, stern tones, “and tell her
from me that I will discuss this matter with her alone. If she intends
to throw me over, she must come to me herself and tell me so. Go now!”

But Jerry stood halting between an open blaze of passion and equally
open discomfiture. He longed to hurl defiance in Kenyon’s face, but some
hidden force restrained him. There was that about the man at that moment
which compelled submission. And so, at length, he turned without another
word, and walked straight from the room with as fine a dignity as he
could muster. By some remarkable means, Dick Kenyon had managed to get
the best of the encounter.

V

Not the next day, nor the next, did Violet Trelevan summon up courage to
face her outraged lover, and ask for her freedom. Jerry did not tell her
precisely what had passed, but she gathered from the information he
vouchsafed that Kenyon had not treated the matter peaceably. She
wondered a little how Jerry had approached it, and told herself with a
beating heart that she would have to take her own line of action.

Nevertheless, for a full week she did nothing, and at the end of that
week the flutter in the Winhalla Railway shares had subsided completely,
and all Jerry’s high hopes were dead. From day to day he had tried to
console himself and her with the reflection that a speculation of that
sort was bound to fluctuate, but, in the end, when the shares went down
to zero, he was forced to own that he had been too sanguine. It had been
but the last flicker before extinction. The capitalist had evidently
thought better of risking his money on such a venture.

“And I was a gaping, weak-kneed idiot not to sell for what I could get!”
he told his sister. “But it’s just our luck. I might have known nothing
decent could ever happen to us!”

It was on that evening, when the outlook was at its blackest, that
Violet wrote at last, without consulting Jerry, to the man in whose
hands lay her freedom.

It was a short epistle, and humbly worded, for she realised that this,
at least, was his due.

“I want you,” she wrote, “to forgive me, if you can, for the wrong I
have done you, and to set me free. I accepted you upon impulse, I am
ashamed to say, for the sake of your money. But the shame would be even
greater if I did not tell you so. I do not know what view you will take,
but my own is that, in releasing me, you will not lose anything that is
worth having.”

The answer to this appeal came the next day by hand:

“May I see you alone at your flat at five o’clock?”

She had not expected it, and she felt for an instant as if a master hand
had touched her, sending the blood tingling through her veins like fire.
She sent a reply in the affirmative; and then set herself to face the
longest day she had ever lived through.

She sat alone during the afternoon, striving desperately to nerve
herself for the ordeal. But strive as she might, the fact remained that
she was horribly, painfully frightened. There was something about this
man which it seemed futile to resist, something that dominated her,
something against which it hurt her to fight.

She heard his ring punctually upon the stroke of five, and she went
herself to answer it.

He greeted her with his usual serenity of manner.

“All alone?” he asked, as he followed her into the little drawing-room
in which he had proposed to her so short a time before.

She assented nervously.

“Jerry went into the city. He won’t be back yet.”

“That’s kind of you,” said Kenyon quietly.

She did not ask him to sit down. They faced each other on the hearthrug.
The strong glare of the electric light showed him that she was very
pale.

Abruptly he thrust out his hand to her.

“You must forgive me for bullying your brother the other day,” he said.
“Really, he deserved it.”

She glanced up quickly.

“Jerry doesn’t understand,” she said.

He kept his hand outstretched though she did not take it.

“I don’t understand, either,” he said.

“Do you really want to shake hands with me?” she murmured, her voice
very low.

“I want to hold your hand in mine, if I may,” he answered simply. “I
think it will help to solve the difficulty. Thank you! Yes; I thought
you were trembling. Now, why, I wonder?”

She did not answer him. Her head was bent.

“Don’t!” he said gently. “There is no cause. Didn’t I tell you I would
shunt if you didn’t want me?”

Still she was silent, her hand lying passive in his.

“Come!” he said. “I want to understand, don’t you know. That note of
yours. You say in it that you accepted me for the sake of my money. Even
so. But I reckon that is more a reason for sticking to me than for
throwing me over.”

He paused, but her head only drooped a little lower.

“Doesn’t that reason still exist?” he asked her, point blank.

She shivered at the direct question, but she answered it.

“Yes; it does. And that’s why I’m ashamed to go on.”

“Why ashamed?” he asked. “How do you know my reason for wanting to marry
you is as good since I never told you what it was?”

She looked up then, suddenly and swiftly, and caught a curious glint in
the blue eyes that watched her.

“I do know,” she said, speaking quickly, impulsively. “And that’s why–I
can’t bear–that you should despise me.”

“Ah!” he said. “Do you really care what an outsider like myself thinks
of you?”

The colour flamed suddenly in her white face, but he went on in his
quiet drawl as if he had not seen it:

“If I thought it was for your happiness, believe me, I would set you
free. But, so far, you haven’t given me any reason that could justify
such a step. Can’t you think of one? Honestly, now?”

She shook her head. Her eyes were full of blinding tears.

“What is it, then?” urged Kenyon. And suddenly his voice was as soft as
a woman’s. “Has the right man turned up unexpectedly, after all? Is it
for his sake?”

“Oh, don’t!” she cried passionately. “Don’t! You hurt me!”

And, turning sharply from him, she hid her face, and broke into
anguished weeping.

Kenyon stood quite still for perhaps ten seconds; then he moved close to
her, and put his arm round the slight, sobbing figure.

She did not start or attempt to resist him.

“There, there!” he whispered soothingly. “I knew there was a reason.
Don’t cry, dear! It will be all right–all right. Never mind the beastly
money. There’s going to be a big boom in the Winhalla Railway shares,
and you’ll make your fortune over it. Yes; I know all about that. A
friend told me. There’s a big capitalist pushing behind. They have gone
down this week, but they are going to rise like a spring tide next. And
then–you’ll be free to marry the right man, eh, dear? I sha’n't stand
in your way. I’ll even come and dance at the wedding, if you’ll have
me.”

She uttered a muffled laugh through her tears, and turned slightly
towards him within the encircling arm.

“I hope you will,” she murmured. “Because–because–” She broke off, and
became silent.

Dick Kenyon’s arm did not slacken.

“If you could make it convenient to finish that sentence of yours, I’d
be real grateful,” he observed, at length.

She lifted her face from her hands, and looked him in the eyes. Her own
were shining.

“Because,” she said unsteadily, “I couldn’t marry the right man–if you
weren’t there.”

He looked straight back at her without a hint of emotion in his heavy
eyes.

“Quite sure of that?” he asked.

And she laughed again tremulously as she made reply.

“Quite sure, Dick,” she said softly, “though I’ve only just found it
out.”

       *       *       *       *       *

Jerry, tearing in a little later, brimful of city news, noticed that his
sister’s face was brighter than usual, but failed, in his excitement, to
perceive a visitor in the room, the visitor not troubling himself to
rise at his entrance.

“News, Vi!” he shouted. “Gorgeous news! The Winhalla Railway is turning
up trumps! The shares are simply flying up. I told Gardner I’d sell at
fifty, but he says they are worth holding on to, for they’ll go above
that. He vows they’re safe. And who do you think is the capitalist
that’s pushing behind? Why, Kenyon!”

He broke off abruptly at this point as Kenyon himself arose leisurely
with a serene smile and outstretched hand.

“Exactly–Kenyon!” he said. “But if you think he’s a rank bad speculator
like yourself, sonny, you’re mistaken. I didn’t make my money that way,
and I don’t reckon to lose it that way either. But Gardner’s right.
Those shares are safe. They aren’t going down again ever any more.”

He turned to the girl on his other side, and laid his free hand on her
shoulder.

“And I guess you’ll forgive me for distressing you,” he said, “when I
tell you why I did it.”

“Well, why, Dick?” she questioned, her face turned to his.

“I just thought I’d like to know, dear,” he drawled, “if there wasn’t
something bigger than money to be got out of this deal. And–are you
listening, Jerry?–I found there was!”

A low whistle floated through the slumbrous silence and died softly away
among the sand-dunes.

The man who sat in the little wooden summer-house that faced the sea
raised his head from his hand and stared outwards. The signal had
scarcely penetrated to his inner consciousness, but it had vaguely
disturbed his train of thought. His eyes were dull and emotionless as he
stared across the blue, smiling water to the long, straight line of the
horizon. They were heavy also as if he had not slept for weeks, and
there were deep lines about his clean-shaven mouth.

Before him on the rough, wooden table lay a letter–a letter that he
knew by heart, yet carried always with him. The writing upon it was firm
and regular, but unmistakably a woman’s. It began: “Dear Hugh,” and it
ended: “Yours very sincerely,” and it had been written to tell him that
because he was crippled for life the writer could no longer entertain
the idea of sharing hers with him.

There had been a ring enclosed with the letter, but this he had not
kept. He had dropped it into the heart of a blazing fire on the day
that he had first been able to move without assistance. He had not done
it in anger. Simply the consciousness of possessing it had been a pain
intolerable to him. So he had destroyed it; but the letter he had kept
through all the dreary months that had followed that awful time. It was
all that was left to him of one whom he had loved passionately, blindly,
foolishly, and who had ceased to love him on the day, now nearly a year
ago, when his friends had ceased to call him by the nickname of
Hercules, that had been his from his boyhood.

And this was her wedding-day–a day of entrancing sunshine, of magic
breezes, of perfect June.

He was picturing her to himself as he sat there, just as he had pictured
her often–ah, often–in the old days.

From his place near the altar he watched her coming towards him up the
great, white-decked church. Her eyes were shining with unclouded
happiness. Behind her bridal veil he caught a glimpse of the exquisite
beauty that chained his heart. Straight towards him the vision moved,
and he–he braced himself to meet it.

A sharp pang of physical pain suddenly wrung his nerves, and in a moment
the vision had passed from his eyes. He groaned and once more covered
his face. Yes, it was her wedding-day. She was there before the altar in
all the splendour of her youth and her loveliness. But he was alone
with his suffering, his broken life, and the long, long, empty years
stretching away before him.

He awoke to the soft splashing of the summer tide, out beyond the
sand-dunes, and he heard again the clear, low whistle which before had
disturbed his dream.

He remained motionless, and a dim, detached wonder crossed his mind. He
had thought himself quite alone.

Again the whistle sounded. It seemed to come from immediately below him.
Slowly and painfully he raised himself.

The next instant an enormous Newfoundland dog rushed panting into his
retreat and proceeded to search every inch of the place with violent
haste. The man on the bench sat still and watched him, but when the
animal with a sudden, clumsy movement knocked his crutches on to the
floor and out of his reach, he uttered an exclamation of annoyance.

The dog gave him a startled glance and continued his headlong
investigation. He was very wet, and he left a trail of sea water
wherever he went. Finally he bounded out as hurriedly as he had entered,
and Hugh Durant was left a prisoner, the nearest of his crutches a full
yard away.

He sat and stared at them with a heavy frown. His helplessness always
oppressed him far more than the pain he had to endure. He cursed the dog
under his breath.

“Oh, I am sorry!” a voice said suddenly some seconds later. “Let me get
them for you!”

Durant looked round sharply. A brown-faced girl in a short, cotton dress
stood in the doorway. Her head was bare and covered with short, black,
curly hair that shone wet in the sunshine. Her eyes were very blue. For
some reason she looked rather ashamed of herself.

She moved forward barefooted and picked up Durant’s crutches.

“I’m sorry, sir,” she said again. “I didn’t know there was any one here
till I heard Caesar knock something down.”

She dusted the tops of the crutches with her sleeve and propped them
against the table.

“Thanks!” said Durant curtly. He was not feeling sociable–he could not
feel sociable–on that day of all days in his life’s record.

Yet, as if attracted by something, the girl lingered.

“It’s lovely down on the shore,” she said half shyly.

“No doubt,” said Durant, and again his tone was curt to churlishness.

Then abruptly he felt that he had been unnecessarily surly, and wondered
if he was getting querulous.

“Been bathing?” he asked, with a brief glance at her wet hair.

She gave him a quick, friendly smile.

“Yes, sir,” she said; and added: “Caesar and I.”

“Fond of the sea, eh?” said Durant.

The soft eyes shone, and the man, who had been a sailor, told himself
that they were deep-sea eyes.

“I love it,” the girl said very earnestly.

Her intensity surprised him a little. He had not expected it in one who,
to judge by her dress, must be a child of the humble fisher-folk. His
interest began to awaken.

“You live near here?” he questioned.

She pointed a brown hand towards the sand-dunes.

“On the shore, sir,” she said. “We hear the waves all night.”

“So do I,” said Durant, and his voice was suddenly sharp with a pain he
could not try to silence. “All night and all day.”

She did not seem to notice his tone.

“You live in the cottage on the cliff?” she asked.

He nodded.

“I came last week,” he said. “I hadn’t seen the sea for nearly a year. I
wanted to be alone. And–so I am.”

“All alone?” she queried quickly.

He nodded again.

“With my servant,” he said. He repeated with a certain doggedness: “I
wanted to be alone.”

There was a pause. The girl was standing in the doorway. Her dog was
basking in the sunshine not a yard away. She looked at the cripple with
thoughtful eyes.

“I live alone, too,” she said. “That is–Caesar and I.”

That successfully aroused Durant’s curiosity.

“You!” he said incredulously.

She put up her hand with a quick movement and pushed the short curls
back from her forehead.

“I am used to it,” she said, with an odd womanly dignity. “I have been
practically alone all my life.”

Durant looked at her closely. She spoke in a very low voice, but there
were rich notes in it that caught his attention.

“Isn’t that very unusual for a girl of your age?” he said.

She smiled again without answering. A blue sunbonnet dangled on her arm.
In the silence that followed she put it on. The great dog arose at the
action, stretched himself, and went to her side. She laid her hand on
his head.

“We play hide-and-seek, Caesar and I,” she said, “among the dunes.”

Durant took his crutches and stumbled with difficulty to his feet. The
lower part of his body was terribly crippled and weak. Only the broad
shoulders of the man testified to the splendid strength that had once
been his, and could never be his again as long as he lived. He saw the
girl turn her head aside as he moved. The sunbonnet completely hid her
face. A sharp spasm of pain set his own like a stone mask.

Suddenly she looked round.

“Will you–will you come and see me some day?” she asked him shyly.

Her tone was rather of request than invitation, and Durant was curiously
touched. He had a feeling that she awaited his reply with eagerness.

He smiled for the first time.

“With pleasure,” he said courteously, “if the path is easy and the
distance not too great for my powers.”

“It is quite close,” she said readily, “hardly a stone’s throw from
here–a little wooden cottage–the first you come to.”

“And you live quite alone?” Durant said.

“I like it best,” she assured him.

“Will you tell me your name?” he asked.

“My name is Molly,” she answered quietly.

“Nothing else?” said Durant with a puzzled frown.

“Nothing else, sir,” she said, with her air of womanly dignity.

He made no outward comment, but inwardly he wondered. Was this odd
little, dark-haired creature some nameless waif of the sea brought up on
the charity of the fisher-folk, he asked himself.

She stood aside for him to pass, drawing Caesar out of his way. He
stopped a moment to pat the dog’s head. And so standing, leaning upon
his crutches, he suddenly and keenly looked into the olive-tinted face
that the sunbonnet shadowed.

“Sorry for me, eh?” he said, and he uttered a laugh that was short and
very bitter.

She bent down over the dog.

“Yes, I am sorry,” she said, almost under her breath.

Bending lower, she picked up something that lay on the ground between
them.

“You dropped this,” she said.

He took it from her with a grim hardening of the mouth. It was the
letter he had received from his fiancee a year ago. But his eyes never
left the face of the girl before him.

“I wonder–” he said abruptly, and stopped.

There was a pause. The girl waited, her hand nervously caressing the
Newfoundland’s curls. She did not raise her eyes, but the lids fluttered
strangely.

“I wonder,” Durant said, and his voice was suddenly kind, “if I might
ask you to do something for me.”

She gave him a swift glance.

“Please do!” she murmured.

“This letter,” he said, and he held it out to her.

“I should like it torn up–very small.”

She took the envelope and hesitated. Durant was watching her. There was
unmistakable mastery in his eyes.

“Go on!” he said briefly.

And with a quick, startled movement, she obeyed. The letter fluttered
around them both in tiny fragments. Hugh Durant looked on with a hard,
impassive face, as he might have looked on at an execution.

The girl’s hands were shaking. She glanced at him once or twice
uncertainly.

When the work of destruction was accomplished she made him a nervous
curtsey and turned to go.

Durant’s face softened a second time into a smile.

“Thank you–Molly,” he said, and he put his hand to his hat though she
was not looking at him.

And afterwards he stood among the fragments of his letter and watched
till both the girl and the dog were out of sight.

Twenty-four hours later Hugh Durant stood on the sandy shore and tapped
with his crutch on the large, flat stone that was set for a step on the
threshold of the little, wooden cottage behind the sand dunes.

He had reached the place with much difficulty, persevering with a
doggedness characteristic of him; and there were great drops on his
forehead though the afternoon was cloudy and cool.

A quick step sounded in answer to his summons, and in a moment his
hostess appeared at the open door.

“Why didn’t you come straight in?” she said hospitably.

She was dressed in lilac print. Her sleeves were turned up to the
elbows, and she wore a big apron with a bib. He noticed that her feet
were no longer bare.

He took off his hat as he answered.

“Perhaps I might have been tempted to do so,” he said, “if I had felt
equal to mounting the step without assistance.”

“Oh!” She pulled down her sleeves hastily. “Will you let me help you?”
she suggested shyly.

Durant’s eyes were slightly drawn with pain. Nevertheless they were very
friendly as he made reply.

“Do you think you can?” he said.

She took his hat from him with an anxious smile, and then the crutch
that he held towards her.

“Tell me exactly what to do!” she said in her sweet, low voice. “I am
very strong.”

“If I may put my arm on your shoulder,” Durant said, “I think it can be
managed. But say at once if it is too much for you!”

Her face was deeply flushed as she bent from the step to give him the
help he needed.

“Bear harder!” she said, as he leant his weight upon her. “Bear much
harder!”

There was an odd little quiver in her voice, but, slight as she was, she
supported him with sturdy strength.

The door opened straight into the tiny cottage parlour. A large wicker
chair, well cushioned, stood in readiness. As Durant lowered himself
into it, he saw that the girl’s eyes were brimming with tears.

“I’ve hurt you!” he exclaimed.

“No, no!” she said, and turned quickly away. “You didn’t bear nearly
hard enough.”

He laughed a little, though his teeth were clenched.

“You’re a very strong woman, Molly,” he said.

“Oh, I am,” she answered instantly. “Now shall you be all right while I
go to fetch tea?”

“Of course,” he said. “Pray don’t make a stranger of me!”

She disappeared into the room at the back of the cottage, and he was
left alone. The great dog came in with stately stride and lay down at
his feet.

Durant sat and looked about him. There was little to attract the eye in
the simple furnishing of the tiny room. There was a small bookcase in
one corner, but it was covered by a red curtain. Two old-fashioned Dutch
figures stood on the mantelpiece on each side of a cheap little clock
that seemed to tick at him almost resentfully. The walls were tinted
green and bore no pictures or decoration of any sort. There was a plain
white tablecloth on the table, and in the middle stood a handleless jug
filled with pink and white wild roses, freshly gathered. There was no
carpet. The floor was strewn with beach sand.

All these details Durant took in with keen interest. Nothing could have
exceeded the simplicity of this dwelling by the sea. There had obviously
been no attempt at artistic arrangement. Cleanliness and a neatness
almost severe were its only characteristics.

“I hope you like toasted scones, sir,” said Molly’s voice in the
doorway.

He looked round to see her come forward with the tea-tray.

“Nothing better,” he said lightly, “particularly if you have made them
yourself.”

She set down her tray and smiled at him. Her short, curling hair gave
her an almost elfish look.

“I’ve been so busy getting ready,” she said childishly. “I’ve never had
a gentleman to tea before.”

“That is a very great honour for me,” said Durant.

Molly looked delighted.

“I think the honour is mine,” she said in her shy voice. “I am just
going to fetch the wooden chair out of the kitchen.”

She departed hastily as if embarrassed, and Durant smiled to himself. It
was wonderful how the oppression had been lifted from his spirit since
his meeting with this lonely dweller on the shore.

When Molly reappeared, he saw that she had assumed a dignity worthy of
the occasion. She sat down behind the brown teapot with a serious face.
He waited for her to lead the conversation, and the result was complete
silence for some seconds.

Then she said suddenly:

“Have you been sitting in the summer-house again?”

“No,” said Durant.

“I am glad of that,” said Molly.

“Why?” he asked.

She hesitated.

“Isn’t it rather a lonely place?” she said.

He smiled faintly.

“You know I came here to be lonely, Molly,” he said.

“Yes; you told me,” said Molly, and he fancied that he heard her sigh.

“Are you never lonely?” he asked in a kindly tone.

“Often,” she said. “Often.”

She was pouring the tea as she spoke. Her head was slightly bent.

“And so you took pity on me?” said Durant.

She shook her head suddenly and vigorously.

“It wasn’t that, sir,” she said in a very low voice. “I–I
wanted–someone–to speak to.”

“I see,” said Durant gently. He added after a moment: “Do you know, I am
glad I chanced to be that someone.”

She smiled at him over the teapot.

“You weren’t pleased–at first,” she said. “You were angry. I heard you
saying–”

“What?” said Durant.

He looked across at her and laughed naturally, spontaneously, for the
first time.

Molly had forgotten to be either embarrassed or dignified.

“I don’t know what it was,” she said; “I only know what it sounded
like.”

“And that made you want to speak to me?” said Durant.

The brown face opposite to him looked impish. Yet it seemed to him that
there was sadness in her eyes.

“It didn’t frighten me away,” she said.

“It would need to be a very timid person to be frightened at me now,”
said Hugh Durant quietly.

She opened her eyes wide, and looked as if she were about to protest.
Then, changing her mind, she remained silent.

“Yes,” he said. “Please say it!”

She shook her head without speaking.

But he persisted. Something in her silence aroused his curiosity.

“Am I really formidable, Molly?” he asked.

She rose to take his empty cup, and paused for a moment at his side,
looking down at him.

“I don’t think you realise how strong you are,” she said enigmatically.

He laughed rather drearily.

“I am gauging my weakness just at present,” he said.

And then, glancing up, he saw quick pain in her eyes, and abruptly
turned the conversation.

Later, when he took his leave, he stood on her step and looked out to
the long, grey line of sea with a faint, dissatisfied frown on his face.

“You’re not afraid–living here?” he asked her at the last moment.

“What is there to fear?” said Molly. “I have Caesar, and there are other
cottages not far away.”

“Yes, I know,” he said. “But at night–when it’s dark–”

A sudden glory shone in the girl’s pure eyes.

“Oh, no, sir,” she said. “I am not afraid.”

And he departed, hobbling with difficulty up the long, sandy slope.

At the top he paused and looked out over the grey, unquiet sea. The
dissatisfaction on his face had given place to perplexity and a faint,
dawning wonder that was like the birth of Hope.

       *       *       *

During the long summer days that followed, that strange friendship,
begun at the moment when Hugh Durant’s life had touched its lowest point
of suffering and misery, ripened into a curiously close intimacy.

The girl was his only visitor–the only friend who penetrated behind the
barrier of loneliness that he had erected for himself. He had sought the
place sick at heart and utterly weary of life, desiring only to be left
alone. And yet, oddly enough, he did not resent the intrusion of this
outsider, who had openly told him that she was sorry.

She visited him occasionally at his hermitage, but more frequently she
would seek him out in his summer-house and take possession of him there
with a winning enchantment that he made no effort to resist. Sometimes
she brought him tea there; sometimes she persuaded him to return with
her to her cottage on the shore.

The embarrassment had wholly passed from her manner. She was eager and
ingenuous as a child. And yet there was something in her–a depth of
feeling, a concentration half-revealed–that made him aware of her
womanhood. She was never confidential with him, but yet he felt her
confidence in every word she uttered.

And the life that had ebbed so low turned in the man’s veins and began
to flow with a steady, rising surge of which he was only vaguely
conscious.

Molly had become his keenest interest. He had ceased to think with
actual pain of the woman who had loved his strength, but had shrunk in
horror from his weakness. His bitterness had seemed to disperse with the
fragments of her torn letter. It was only a memory to him now–scarcely
even that.

“This place has done me a lot of good,” he said to Molly one day. “I
have written to my friend Gregory Mountfort to come and see me. He is my
doctor.”

She looked up at him quickly. She was sitting on her doorstep and the
August sunlight was on her hair. There were wonderful glints of gold
among the dark curls.

“Shall you go away, then?” she asked.

“I may–soon,” he said.

She was silent, bending over some work that she had taken up. The man
looked down at the bowed head. The old look of perplexity, of wonder,
was in his eyes.

“What shall you do?” he said abruptly.

She made a startled movement, but did not raise her eyes.

“I shall just–go on,” she said, in a voice that was hardly audible.

“Not here,” he said. “You will be lonely.”

There was an unusual note of mastery in his voice. She glanced up, and
met his eyes resolutely for a moment.

“I am used to loneliness,” she said slowly.

“But you don’t prefer it?” he said.

She bent her head again.

“Yes, I prefer it,” she said.

There followed a pause. Then abruptly Durant asked a question.

“Are you still sorry for me?” he said.

“No,” said Molly.

He bent slightly towards her. Movement had become much easier to him of
late.

“Molly,” he said very gently, “that is the kindest thing you have ever
said.”

She laughed in a queer, shaky note over her work.

He bent nearer.

“You have done a tremendous lot for me,” he said, speaking very softly.
“I wonder if I dare ask of you–one thing more?”

She did not answer. He put his hand on her shoulder.

“Molly,” he said, “will you marry me?”

“No,” said Molly under her breath.

“Ah!” he said. “Forgive me for asking!”

She looked up at him then with that in her eyes which he could not
understand.

“Mr. Durant,” she said, steadily, “I thank you very much, and it
isn’t–that. But I can only be your friend.”

“Never anything more, Molly?” he said, and he smiled at her, very
gently, very kindly, but without tenderness.

“No, sir,” Molly said in the same steady tone. “Never anything more.”

       *       *       *

“Well,” said Gregory Mountfort on the following day, “this place has
done wonders for you, Hugh. You’re a different man.”

“I believe I am,” said Hugh.

He spoke with his eyes upon a bouquet of poppies and corn that had been
left at his door without any message early that morning. It was eloquent
to him of a friendship that did not mean to be lightly extinguished, but
his heart was heavy notwithstanding. He had begun to desire something
greater than friendship.

“Physically,” said Mountfort, “you are stronger than I ever expected to
see you again. You don’t suffer much pain now, do you?”

“No, not much,” said Durant.

He turned to stare out of his open window at the sunlit sea. His eyes
were full of weariness.

“Look here,” the doctor said. “You’re not an invalid any longer. I
should leave this place if I were you. Go abroad! Go round the world!
Don’t stagnate any longer! It isn’t worthy of you.”

Hugh Durant shook his head.

“It’s no good trying to float a stranded hulk, dear fellow,” he said.
“Don’t attempt it! I am better off where I am.”

“You ought to get married,” his friend returned brusquely. “You weren’t
created for the lonely life.”

“I shall never marry,” Durant said quietly.

And Mountfort was disappointed. He wondered if he were still vexing his
soul over the irrevocable.

He had motored down from town, and in the afternoon he carried his
patient off for a thirty-mile spin. They went through the depths of the
country, through tiny villages hidden among the hills, through long
stretches of pine woods, over heather-covered uplands. But though it did
him good, Durant was conscious of keenest pleasure when, returning, they
ran into view of the sea. He felt that the shore and the sand-dunes were
his own peculiar heritage.

Mountfort steered for the village scattered over the top of the cliff.
Durant had persuaded him to remain for the night, and he had to send a
telegram. They puffed up a steep, winding hill to the post-office, and
the doctor got out.

“Back in thirty seconds,” he said, as he walked away.

Hugh was in no hurry. It was a wonderfully calm evening. The sea looked
like a sheet of silver, motionless, silent, immense. The tide was very
low. The sand-dunes looked mere hummocks from that great height. Myriads
of martens were circling about the edge of the cliff, which was
protected by a crazy wooden railing. He sat and watched them without
much interest. He was thinking chiefly of that one cottage on the shore
a hundred feet below, which he knew so well.

He wondered if Molly had been to the summer-house to look for him; and
then, chancing to glance up, he caught sight of her coming towards him
from the roadside. At the same instant something jerked in the motor,
and it began to move. It was facing up the hill, and the angle was a
steep one. Very slowly at first the wheels revolved, and the car moved
straight backwards as if pushed by an unseen hand.

Hugh realised the danger in a moment. The road curved sharply not a
dozen yards behind him, and at that curve was the sheer precipice of the
cliff. He was powerless to apply the brakes, and he could not even throw
himself out. The sudden consciousness of this ran through him piercing
as a sword-blade.

In every pulse of his being he felt the intense, the paralysing horror
of violent death. For the first awful moment he could not even call for
help. The sensation of falling headlong backwards gripped his throat
and choked his utterance.

He made a wild, ineffectual movement with his hands. And then he heard a
loud cry. A woman’s figure flashed towards him. She seemed to swoop as
the martens swooped along the face of the cliff. The car was running
smoothly towards that awful edge. He felt that it was very
near–horribly near; but he could not turn to look.

Even as the thought darted through his brain he saw Molly, wide-eyed,
frenzied, clinging to the side of the car. She was in the act of
springing on to it, and that knowledge loosened his tongue.

He yelled to her hoarsely to keep away. He even tried to thrust her
hands off the woodwork. But she withstood him fiercely, with a strength
that agonised and overcame. In a second she was on the step, where she
swayed perilously, then fell forward on her hands and knees at his feet.

The car continued to run back. There came a sudden jerk, a crash of
rending wood, a frightful pause. The railing had splintered. They were
on the brink. Hugh bent and tried to take her in his arms.

He was strung to meet that awful plunge; he was face to face with death;
but–was it by some miracle?–the car was stayed. There, on the very
edge of destruction, with not an inch to spare, it stood suddenly
motionless, as if checked by some mysterious, unseen force.

As complete understanding returned to him, Hugh saw that the woman at
his feet had thrown herself upon the foot brake and was holding it
pressed down with both her rigid hands.

       *       *       *

“Yes; but who taught her where to look for the brake?” said Mountfort
two hours later.

The excitement was over, but the subject fascinated Mountfort. The girl
had sprung away and disappeared down one of the cliff paths directly
Hugh had been extricated from danger. Mountfort was curious about her,
but Hugh was uncommunicative. He had no answer ready to Mountfort’s
question. He scarcely seemed to hear it.

Barely a minute after its utterance he reached for his crutches and got
upon his feet.

“I am going down to the shore,” he said. “I shan’t sleep otherwise.
You’ll excuse me, old fellow?”

Mountfort looked at him and nodded. He was very intimate with Hugh.

“Don’t mind me!” he said.

And Hugh went out alone in the summer dusk.

The night was almost ghostly in its stillness. He went down the winding
path that he knew so well without a halt. Far away the light of a
steamer travelled over the quiet water. The sea murmured drowsily as the
tide rose. It was not quite dark.

Outside her cottage-door he stopped and tapped upon the stone. The door
stood open, and as he waited he heard a clear, low whistle behind him on
the dunes. She was coming towards him, the great dog Caesar bounding by
her side. As she drew near he noticed again how slight she was, and
marvelled at her strength.

She reached him in silence. The light was very dim. He put out his hand
to her, but somehow he could not utter a word.

“I knew it must be you,” she said. “I–I was waiting for you.”

She put her hand into his; but still the man stood mute. No words would
come to him.

She looked at him uncertainly, almost nervously. Then–

“What is it?” she asked, under her breath.

He spoke at last but not to utter the words she expected.

“I haven’t come to say, ‘Thank you,’ Molly,” he said. “I have come to
ask why.”

“Oh!” said Molly.

She was startled, confused, almost scared, by the mastery that underlay
the gentleness of his tone. He kept her hand in his, standing there,
facing her in the dimness; and, cripple as he was, she knew him for a
strong man.

“I have come to ask,” he said–”and I mean to know–why yesterday you
refused to marry me.”

She made a quick movement. His words astounded her. She felt inclined to
run away. But he kept her prisoner.

“Don’t be afraid of me, Molly!” he said half sadly. “You had a reason.
What was it.”

She bit her lip. Her eyes were full of sudden tears.

“Tell me!” he said.

And she answered, as if he compelled her:

“It was because–because you don’t love me,” she said with difficulty.

She felt his hand tighten upon hers.

“Ah!” he said. “And that was–the only reason?”

Molly was trembling.

“It was the only reason that mattered,” she said in a choked voice.

He leant towards her in the dusk.

“Molly,” he said. “Molly, I worship you!”

She heard the deep quiver in his voice, and it thrilled her from head to
foot. She began to sob, and he drew her towards him.

“Wait!” she said, “Oh, wait! Come inside, and I’ll tell you!”

He went in with her, leaning on her shoulder.

“Sit down!” whispered Molly. “I’m going to tell you something.”

“Don’t cry!” he said gently. “It may be something I know already.”

“Oh, no, it isn’t!” she said with conviction.

She stood before him in the twilight, her hands clasped tightly
together.

“Do you remember a girl called Mary Fielding?” she said, with a piteous
effort to control her voice. “She used to be the friend of–of–your
fiancee, Lady Maud Belville, long ago, before you had your accident.”

He nodded gravely.

“I remember her,” he said.

“I don’t suppose you ever noticed her much,” the girl continued shakily.
“She was uninteresting, and always in the background.”

“I should know her anywhere,” said Durant with confidence.

“No, no,” she protested. “I’m sure you wouldn’t. You–you never gave her
a second thought, though she–was foolish enough–idiotic enough–to–to
care whether you did or not.”

“Was she?” he said softly. “Was she? And was that why she came to live
among the sand-dunes and cut off her hair and wore print
dresses–and–and made life taste sweet to me again?”

“Ah! You know now!” she said, with a sound that was like laughter
through tears.

He held out his arms to her.

“My darling,” he said. “I knew on the first day I saw you here.”

She knelt down beside him with a quick, impulsive movement.

“You–knew!” she gasped incredulously.

He smiled at her with great tenderness.

“I knew,” he said, “and I wondered–how I wondered–what you had come
for!”

“I only came to be a friend,” she broke in hastily, “to–to try to help
you through your bad time.”

“I guessed it must be that,” he said softly over her bowed head, “when
you said ‘No’ to me yesterday.”

“But you didn’t tell me you cared,” protested Molly.

“No,” he said. “I was so horribly afraid that you might take me out of
pity, Molly.”

“And I–I wasn’t going to be second fiddle!” said Molly waywardly.

She resisted him a little as he turned her face upwards, but he had his
way. There was a quiver of laughter in his voice when he spoke again.

“You could never be that,” he said. “You were made to lead the
orchestra. Still, tell me why you did it, darling! Make me understand!”

And Molly yielded at length with her arms about his neck.

“I loved you!” she said passionately. “I loved you!”

“When you come to reflect that there are only a few planks between you
and the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, it makes you feel sort of
pensive.”

“I beg your pardon?”

The stranger, smoking his cigarette in the lee of the deck-cabins,
turned his head sharply in the direction of the voice. He encountered
the wide, unembarrassed gaze of a girl’s grey eyes. She had evidently
just come up on deck.

“I beg yours,” she rejoined composedly. “I thought at first you were
some one else.”

He shrugged his shoulders, and turned away. Quite obviously he was not
disposed to be sociable upon so slender an introduction.

The girl, however, made no move to retreat. She stood thoughtfully
tapping on the boards with the point of her shoe.

“Were you playing cards last night down in the saloon?” she asked
presently.

“I was looking on.”

He threw the words over his shoulder, not troubling to turn.

The girl shivered. The morning air was damp and chill.

“You do a good deal of that, Mr.–Mr.–” She paused suggestively.

But the man would not fill in the blank. He smoked on in silence.

The vessel was rolling somewhat heavily, and the splash of the drifting
foam reached them occasionally where they stood. There were no other
ladies in sight. Suddenly the clear, American voice broke through the
man’s barrier of silence.

“I know quite well what you are, you know. You may just as well tell me
your name as leave me to find it out for myself.”

He looked at her then for the first time, keenly, even critically. His
clean-shaven mouth wore a very curious expression.

“My name is West,” he said, after a moment.

She nodded briskly.

“Your professional name, I suppose. You are a professional, of course?”

His eyes continued to watch her narrowly. They were blue eyes,
piercingly, icily blue.

“Why ‘of course,’ if one may ask?”

She laughed a light, sweet laugh, inexpressibly gay. Cynthia Mortimer
could be charmingly inconsequent when she chose.

“I don’t think you are a bit clever, you know,” she said. “I knew what
you were directly I saw you standing by the gangway watching the people
coming on board. You looked really professional then, just as if you
didn’t care a red cent whether you caught your man or not. I knew you
did care though, and I was ready to dance when I knew you hadn’t got
him. Think you’ll track him down on our side?”

West turned his eyes once more upon the heaving, grey water, carelessly
flicking the ash from his cigarette.

“I don’t think,” he said briefly. “I know.”

“You–know?” The wide eyes opened wider, but they gathered no
information from the unresponsive profile that smoked the cigarette.
“You know where Mr. Nat Verney is?” she breathed, almost in a whisper.
“You don’t say! Then–then you weren’t really watching out for him at
the gangway?”

He jerked up his head with an enigmatical laugh.

“My methods are not so simple as that,” he said.

Cynthia joined quite generously in his laugh, notwithstanding its hard
note of ridicule. She had become keenly interested in this man, in spite
of–possibly in consequence of–the rebuffs he so unsparingly
administered. She was not accustomed to rebuffs, this girl with her
delicate, flower-like beauty. They held for her something of the charm
of novelty, and abashed her not at all.

“And you really think you’ll catch him?” she questioned, a note of
honest regret in her voice.

“Don’t you want him to be caught?”

He pitched his cigarette overboard and turned to her with less of
churlishness in his bearing.

She met his eyes quite frankly.

“I should just love him to get away,” she declared, with kindling eyes.
“Oh, I know he’s a regular sharper, and he’s swindled heaps of
people–I’m one of them, so I know a little about it. He swindled me out
of five hundred dollars, and I can tell you I was mad at first. But now
that he is flying from justice, I’m game enough to want him to get away.
I suppose my sympathies generally lie with the hare, Mr. West. I’m sorry
if it annoys you, but I was created that way.”

West was frowning, but he smiled with some cynicism over her last
remarks.

“Besides,” she continued, “I couldn’t help admiring him. He has a
regular genius for swindling–that man. You’ll agree with me there?”

A sudden heavy roll of the vessel pitched her forward before he could
reply. He caught her round the waist, saving her from a headlong fall,
and she clung to him, laughing like a child at the mishap.

“I think I’ll have to go below,” she decided regretfully. “But you’ve
been good to me, and I’m glad I spoke. I’ve always been somewhat
prejudiced against detectives till to-day. My cousin Archie–you saw him
in the cardroom last night–vowed you were nothing half so interesting.
Why is it, I wonder, that detectives always look like journalists?” She
looked at him with eyes of friendly criticism. “You didn’t deceive me,
you see. But then”–ingenuously–”I’m clever in some ways, much more
clever than you’d think. Now you won’t cut me next time we meet, will
you? Because–perhaps–I’m going to ask you to do something for me.”

“What do you want me to do?”

The man’s voice was hard, his eyes cold as steel, but his question had
in it a shade–just a shade–of something warmer than mere curiosity.

She took him into her confidence without an instant’s hesitation.

“My cousin Archie–you may have noticed–you were looking on last
night–he’s a very careless player, and headstrong too. But he can’t
afford to lose any, and I don’t want him to come to grief. You see, I’m
rather fond of him.”

“Well?”

The man’s brows were drawn down over his eyes. His expression was not
encouraging.

“Well,” she proceeded, undismayed, “I saw you looking on, and you looked
as if you knew a few things. So I thought you’d be a safe person to ask.
I can’t look after him; and his mother–well, she’s worse than useless.
But a man–a real strong man like you–is different. If I were to
introduce you, couldn’t you look after him a bit–just till we get
across?”

With much simplicity she made her request, but there was a tinge of
anxiety in her eyes. Certainly West, staring steadily forth over the
grey waste of tumbling waters, looked sufficiently forbidding.

After several seconds of silence he flung an abrupt question:

“Why don’t you ask some one else?”

“There is no one else,” she answered.

“No one else?” He made a gesture of impatient incredulity.

“No one that I can trust,” she explained.

“And you trust me?”

“Of course I do.”

“Why?” Again he looked at her with a piercing scrutiny. His eyes held a
savage, almost a threatening expression.

But the girl only laughed, lightly and confidently.

“Why? Oh, just because you are trustworthy, I guess. I can’t think of
any other reason.”

West’s look relaxed, became abstracted, and finally fell away from her.

“You appear to be a lady of some discernment,” he observed drily.

She proffered her hand impulsively, her eyes dancing.

“My, that’s the first pretty thing you’ve said to me!” she declared
flippantly. “I just like you, Mr. West!”

West was feeling for his cigarette case. He gave her his hand without
looking at her, as if her approbation did not greatly gratify him. When
she was gone he moved away along the wind-swept deck with his collar up
to his ears and his head bent to the gale. His conversation with the
American girl had not apparently made him feel any more sociably
inclined towards his fellow-passengers.

       *       *       *       *       *

Certainly, as Cynthia had declared, young Archibald Bathurst was an
exceedingly reckless player. He lacked the judgment and the cool brain
essential to a good cardplayer, with the result that he lost much more
often than he won. But notwithstanding this fact he had a passion for
cards which no amount of defeat could abate–a passion which he never
failed to indulge whenever an opportunity presented itself.

At the very moment when his cousin was making her petition on his behalf
to the surly Englishman on deck, he was seated in the saloon with three
or four men older than himself, playing and losing, playing and losing,
with almost unvarying monotony, yet with a feverish relish that had in
it something tragic.

He was only three-and-twenty, and, as he was wont to remark, ill-luck
dogged him persistently at every turn. He never blamed himself when rash
speculations failed, and he never profited by bitter experience. Simply,
he was by nature a spendthrift, high-spirited, impulsive, weak, with
little thought for the future and none at all for the past. Wherever he
went he was popular. His gaiety and spontaneity won him favour. But no
one took him very seriously. No one ever dreamed that his ill-luck was a
cause for anything but mirth.

A good deal of money had changed hands when the party separated to dine,
but, though young Bathurst was as usual a loser, he displayed no
depression. Only, as he sauntered away to his cabin, he flung a laughing
challenge to those who remained:

“See if I don’t turn the tables presently!”

They laughed with him, pursuing him with chaff till he was out of
hearing. The boy was a game youngster, and he knew how to lose.
Moreover, it was generally believed that he could afford to pay for his
pleasures.

But a man who met him suddenly outside his cabin read something other
than indifference upon his flushed face. He only saw him for an instant.
The next, Archie had swung past and was gone, a clanging door shutting
him from sight.

When the little knot of cardplayers reassembled after dinner their
number was augmented. A short, broad-shouldered man, clean-shaven, with
piercing blue eyes, had scraped acquaintance with one of them, and had
accepted an invitation to join the play. Some surprise was felt among
the rest, for this man had till then been disposed to hold aloof from
his fellow-passengers, preferring a solitary cigarette to any amusements
that might be going forward.

A New York man named Rudd muttered to his neighbour that the fellow
might be all right, but he had the eyes of a sharper. The neighbour in
response murmured the words “private detective” and Rudd was relieved.

Archie Bathurst was the last to arrive, and dropped into the place he
had occupied all the afternoon. It was immediately facing the stranger,
whom he favoured with a brief and somewhat disparaging stare before
settling down to play.

The game was a pure gamble. They played swiftly, and in silence. West
seemed to take but slight interest in the issue, but he won steadily and
surely. Young Bathurst, playing feverishly, lost and lost, and lost
again. The fortunes of the other four players varied. But always the
newcomer won his ventures.

The evening was half over when Archie suddenly and loudly demanded
higher stakes, to turn his luck, as he expressed it.

“Double them if you like,” said West.

Rudd looked at him with a distrustful eye, and said nothing. The other
players were disposed to accede to the boy’s vehement request, and after
a little discussion the matter was settled to his satisfaction. The game
was resumed at higher points.

Some onlookers had drawn round the table scenting excitement. Archie,
sitting with his back to the wall, was playing with headlong
recklessness. For a while he continued to lose, and then suddenly and
most unexpectedly he began to win. A most rash speculation resulted in
his favour, and from that moment it seemed that his luck had turned.
Once or twice he lost, but these occasions were far outbalanced by
several brilliant coups. The tide had turned at last in his favour.

He played as a man possessed, swiftly and feverishly. It seemed that he
and West were to divide the honours. For West’s luck scarcely varied,
and Rudd continued to look at him askance.

For the greater part of an hour young Bathurst won with scarcely a
break, till the spectators began to chaff him upon his outrageous
success.

“You’d better stop,” one man warned him. “She’s a fickle jade, you know,
Bathurst. Take too much for granted, and she’ll desert you.”

But Bathurst did not even seem to hear. He played with lowered eyes and
twitching mouth, and his hands shook perceptibly. The gambler’s lust was
upon him.

“He’ll go on all night,” murmured the onlookers.

But this prophecy was not to be fulfilled.

It was a very small thing that stemmed the racing current of the boy’s
success–no more than a slight click audible only to a few, and the
tinkle of something falling–but in an instant, swift as a thunderbolt,
the wings of tragedy swept down upon the little party gathered about the
table.

Young Bathurst uttered a queer, half-choked exclamation, and dived
downwards. But the man next to him, an Englishman named Norton, dived
also, and it was he who, after a moment, righted himself with something
shining in his hand which he proceeded grimly to display to the whole
assembled company. It was a small, folding mirror–little more than a
toy, it looked–with a pin attached to its leathern back.

Deliberately Norton turned it over, examining it in such a way that
others might examine it too. Then, having concluded his investigation of
this very simple contrivance, he slapped it down upon the table with a
gesture of unutterable contempt.

“The secret of success,” he observed.

Every one present looked at Archie, who had sunk back in his chair white
to the lips. He seemed to be trying to say something, but nothing came
of it.

And then, quite calmly, ending a silence more terrible than any tumult
of words, another voice made itself heard.

“Even so, Mr. Norton.” West bent forward and with the utmost composure
possessed himself of the shining thing upon the table. “This is my
property. I have been rooking you fellows all the evening.”

The avowal was so astounding and made with such complete sang-froid
that no one uttered a word. Only every one turned from Archie to stare
at the man who thus serenely claimed his own.

He proceeded with unvarying coolness to explain himself.

“It was really done as an experiment,” he said. “I am not a card-sharper
by profession, as some of you already know. But in the course of certain
investigations not connected with the matter I now have in hand, I
picked this thing up, and, being something of a specialist in certain
forms of cheating, I made up my mind to try my hand at this and prove
for myself its extreme simplicity. You see how easy it is to swindle,
gentlemen, and the danger to which you expose yourselves. There is no
necessity for me to explain the trick further. The instrument speaks for
itself. It is merely a matter of dexterity, and keeping it out of
sight.”

He held it up a second time before his amazed audience, twisted it this
way and that, with the air of a conjurer displaying his smartest trick,
attached it finally to the lapel of his coat, and rose.

“As a practical demonstration it seems to have acted very well,” he
remarked. “And no harm done. If you are all satisfied, so am I.”

He collected the notes at his elbow with a single careless sweep of the
hand, and tossed them into the middle of the table; then, with a brief,
collective bow, he turned to go. But Rudd, the first to recover from his
amazement, sprang impetuously to his feet. “One moment, sir!” he said.

West stopped at once, a cold glint of humour in his eyes. Without a sign
of perturbation he faced round, meeting the American’s hostile scrutiny
calmly, judicially.

“I wish to say,” said Rudd, “on behalf of myself, and–I think I may
take it–on behalf of these other gentlemen also, that your action was a
most dastardly piece of impertinence, to give it its tamest name.
Naturally, we don’t expect Court manners from one of your profession,
but we do look for ordinary common honesty. But it seems that we look in
vain. You have behaved like a mighty fine skunk, sir. And if you don’t
see that there’s any crying need for a very humble apology, you’ve got
about the thickest hide that ever frayed a horsewhip.”

Every one was standing by the time this elaborate threat was uttered,
and it was quite obvious that Rudd voiced the general opinion. The only
one whose face expressed no indignation was Archie Bathurst. He was
leaning against the wall, mopping his forehead with a shaking hand.

No one looked at him. All attention was centred upon West, who met it
with a calm serenity suggestive of contempt. He showed himself in no
hurry to respond to Rudd’s indictment, and when he did it was not
exclusively to Rudd that he spoke.

“I am sorry,” he coolly said, “that you consider yourselves aggrieved by
my experiment. I do not myself see in what way I have injured you.
However, perhaps you are the best judges of that. If you consider an
apology due to you, I am quite ready to apologise.”

His glance rested for a second upon Archie, then slowly swept the entire
assembly. There was scant humility about him, apologise though he might.

Rudd returned his look with open disgust. But it was Norton who replied
to West’s calm defence of himself.

“It is Bathurst who is the greatest loser,” he said, with a glance at
that young man, who was beginning to recover from his agitation. “It was
a tom-fool trick to play, but it’s done. You won’t get another
opportunity for your experiments on board this boat. So–if Bathurst is
satisfied–I should say the sooner you apologise and clear out the
better.”

“We will confiscate this, anyway,” declared Rudd, plucking the mirror
from West’s coat.

He flung it down, and ground his heel upon it with venomous intention.
West merely shrugged his shoulders.

“I apologise,” he said briefly, “singly and collectively, to all
concerned in my experiment, especially”–he made a slight pause–”to Mr.
Bathurst, whose run of luck I deeply regret to have curtailed. If Mr.
Bathurst is satisfied, I will now withdraw.”

He paused again, as if to give Bathurst an opportunity to express an
opinion. But Archie said nothing whatever. He was staring down upon the
table, and did not so much as raise his eyes.

West shrugged his shoulders again, ever so slightly, and swung slowly
upon his heel. In a dead silence he walked away down the saloon. No one
spoke till he had gone.

       *       *       *       *       *

A black, moaning night had succeeded the grey, gusty day. The darkness
came down upon the sea like a pall, covering the long, heaving swell
from sight–a darkness that wrapped close, such a darkness as could be
felt–through which the spray drove blindly.

There was small attraction for passengers on deck, and West grimaced to
himself as he emerged from the heated cabins. Yet it was not altogether
distasteful to him. He was a man to whom a calm atmosphere meant
intolerable stagnation. He was essentially born to fight his way in the
world.

For a while he paced alone, to and fro, along the deserted deck, his
hands behind him, the inevitable cigarette between his lips. But
presently he paused and stood still close to the companion by which he
had ascended. It was sheltered here, and he leaned against the woodwork
by which Cynthia Mortimer had supported herself that morning, and smoked
serenely and meditatively.

Minutes passed. There came the sound of hurrying feet upon the stairs
behind him, and he moved a little to one side, glancing downwards.

The light at the head of the companion revealed a man ascending,
bareheaded, and in evening dress. His face, upturned, gleamed deathly
white. It was the face of Archie Bathurst.

West suddenly squared his shoulders and blocked the opening.

“Go and get an overcoat, you young fool!” he said.

Archie gave a great start, stood a second, then, without a word, turned
back and disappeared.

West left his sheltered corner and paced forward across the deck. He
came to a stand by the rail, gazing outwards into the restless darkness.
There seemed to be the hint of a smile in his intent eyes.

A few more minutes drifted away. Then there fell a step behind him; a
hand touched his arm.

“Can I speak to you?” Archie asked.

Slowly West turned.

“If you have anything of importance to say,” he said.

Archie faced him with a desperate resolution.

“I want to ask you–I want to know–what in thunder you did it for!”

“Eh?” said West. “Did what?”

He almost drawled the words, as if to give the boy time to control his
agitation.

Archie stared at him incredulously.

“You must know what I mean.”

“Haven’t an idea.”

There was just a tinge of contempt this time in the words. What an
unconscionable bungler the fellow was!

“But you must!” persisted Archie, blundering wildly. “I suppose you knew
what you were doing just now when–when—-”

“I generally know what I am doing,” observed West.

“Then why—-”

Archie stumbled again, and fell silent, as if he had hurt himself.

“I don’t always care to discuss my motives,” said West very decidedly.

“But surely–” Archie suddenly pulled up, realising that by this
spasmodic method he was making no headway. “Look here, sir,” he said,
more quietly, “you’ve done a big thing for me to-night–a dashed fine
thing! Heaven only knows what you did it for, but—-”

“I have done nothing whatever for you,” said West shortly. “You make a
mistake.”

“But you’ll admit—-”

“I admit nothing.”

He made as if he would turn on his heel, but Archie caught him by the
arm.

“I know I’m a cur,” he said. And his voice shook a little. “I don’t
wonder you won’t speak to me. But there are some things that can’t be
left unsaid. I’m going down now, at once, to tell those fellows what
actually happened.”

“Then you are going to make a big fool of yourself to no purpose,” said
West.

He stood still, scanning the boy’s face with pitiless eyes. Archie
writhed impotently.

“I can’t stand it!” he said, with vehemence. “I thought I was blackguard
enough to let you do it. But–no doubt I’m a fool, as you say–I find I
can’t.”

“You can’t help yourself,” said West. He planted himself squarely in
front of Archie. “Listen to this!” he said. “You know what I am?”

“They say you are a detective,” said Archie.

West nodded.

“Exactly. And, as such, I do whatever suits my purpose without
explaining why to the rest of the world. If you are fortunate enough to
glean a little advantage from what I do, take it, and be quiet about it.
Don’t hamper me with your acknowledgments. I assure you I have no more
concern for your ultimate fate than those fellows below that you’ve been
swindling all the evening. One thing I will say, though, for your
express benefit. You will never make a good, even an indifferently good,
gambler. And as to card-sharping, you’ve no talent whatever. Better give
it up.”

His blue eyes looked straight at Archie with a stare that was openly
supercilious, and Archie stood abashed.

“You–you are awfully good,” he stammered at length.

West’s brief laugh lived in his memory for long after. It held an
indescribable sting, almost as if the man resented something. Yet the
next moment unexpectedly he held out his hand.

“A matter of opinion,” he observed drily. “Good-night! Remember what I
have said to you.”

“I shall never forget it,” Archie said earnestly.

He wrung the extended hand hard, waited an instant, then, as West turned
from him with that slight characteristic lift of the shoulders, he moved
away and went below.

       *       *       *       *       *

“I’d just like a little talk with you, Mr. West, if I may.” Lightly the
audacious voice arrested him, and, as it were, against his will, West
stood still.

She was standing behind him in the morning sunshine, her hair blown all
about her face, her grey eyes wide and daring, full of an alert
friendliness that could not be ignored. She moved forward with her
light, free step and stood beside him. West was smoking as usual. His
expression was decidedly surly. Cynthia glanced at him once or twice
before she spoke.

“You mustn’t mind what I’m going to ask you,” she said at length gently.
“Now, Mr. West, what was it–exactly–that happened in the saloon last
night? Surely you’ll tell me by myself if I promise–honest Injun–not
to tell again.”

“Why should I tell you?” said West, in his brief, unfriendly style.

Cynthia was undaunted. “Because you’re a gentleman,” she said boldly.

He shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know what reason I have given you to
say so.”

“No?” She looked at him with a funny little smile. “Well then, I just
feel it in my bones; and nothing you do or leave undone will make me
believe the contrary.”

“Much obliged to you,” said West. His blue eyes were staring straight
out over the sea to the long, blue sky-line. He seemed too absorbed in
what he saw to pay much attention to the girl beside him.

But she was not to be shaken off. “Mr. West,” she began again, breaking
in upon his silence, “do you know what they are saying about you
to-day?”

“Haven’t an idea.”

“No,” she said. “And I don’t suppose you care either. But I care. It
matters a lot to me.”

“Don’t see how,” threw in West.

He turned in his abrupt, disconcerting way, and gave her a piercing
look. She averted her face instantly, but he had caught her unawares.

“Good heavens!” he said. “What’s the matter?”

“Nothing,” she returned, with a sort of choked vehemence. “There’s
nothing the matter with me. Only I’m feeling badly about–about what I
asked you to do yesterday. I’d sooner have lost every dollar I have in
the world, if I had only known, than–than have you do–what you did.”

“Good heavens!” West said again.

He waited a little then, looking down at her as she leaned upon the rail
with downcast face. At length, as she did not raise her head, he
addressed her for the first time on his own initiative:

“Miss Mortimer!”

She made a slight movement to indicate that she was listening, but she
remained gazing down into the green and white of the racing water.

Unconsciously he moved a little nearer to her. “There is no occasion for
you to feel badly,” he said. “I had my own reasons for what I did. It
doesn’t much matter what they were. But let me tell you for your comfort
that neither socially nor professionally has it done me any harm.”

“They are all saying: ‘Set a thief to catch a thief,’” she interposed,
with something like a sob in her voice.

“They can say what they like.”

West’s tone expressed the most stoical indifference, but she would not
be comforted.

“If only I hadn’t–asked you to!” she murmured.

He made his peculiar, shrugging gesture. “What does it matter? Moreover,
what you asked of me was something quite apart from this. It had nothing
whatever to do with it.”

She stood up sharply at that, and faced him with burning eyes. “Oh,
don’t tell me that lie!” she exclaimed passionately. “I’m not such a
child as to be taken in by it. You don’t deceive me at all, Mr. West. I
know as well as you do–better–that the man who did the swindling last
night was not you. And I’m sick–I’m downright sick–whenever I think of
it!”

West’s expression changed slightly as he looked at her. He seemed to
regard her as a doctor regards the patient for whom he contemplates a
change of treatment.

“See here,” he abruptly said. “You are distressing yourself all to no
purpose. If you will promise to keep it secret, I’ll tell you the facts
of the case.”

Cynthia’s face changed also. She caught eagerly at the suggestion.
“Yes?” she said. “Yes? I promise, of course. And I’m quite trustworthy.”

“I believe you are,” he said, with a grim smile. “Well, the fact of the
matter is this. The man we want is on board this ship, but being only a
private detective, I don’t possess a warrant for his arrest. Therefore
all I can do is to keep him in sight. And I can only do that by throwing
him as far as possible off the scent. If he takes me for a card-sharper,
all the better. For he’s as slippery as an eel, and I have to play him
pretty carefully.”

He ceased. Cynthia’s eyes were growing wider and wider.

“Nat Verney on board this ship?” she gasped.

He nodded.

“Yes. You wanted him to get away, didn’t you? But I don’t think he will,
this time. He will probably be arrested directly we reach New York. But,
meantime, I must watch out.”

“Oh!” breathed Cynthia. “Then”–with sudden hope dawning in her
eyes–”it really was your doing, that trick at the card-table last
night?”

West uttered his brief, hard laugh.

“What do you take me for?”

She heaved a great sigh of relief.

“And it wasn’t Archie, after all? I’m thankful you told me. I thought–I
thought–But it doesn’t matter, does it? Tell me, do tell me, Mr. West,”
drawing very close to him, “which–which is Mr. Nat Verney?”

West seemed to hesitate.

“Oh, do tell me!” she begged. “I know I’m only a woman, but I always
keep my word. And it’s only two days more to New York.”

He looked closely into her eyes and yielded.

“I’m trusting you with my reputation,” he said. “It’s the stout,
red-faced man called Rudd.”

“Mr. Rudd?” She started back. “You don’t say? That man?” There followed
a short pause while she digested the information. Then, as on the
previous morning, she suddenly extended her hand. “Well, I hate that
man, anyway. And I believe you’re really clever. If you like, Mr. West,
I’ll help you to watch out.”

“Thanks!” said West. He took the little hand into a tight grip, still
looking straight into her eyes. There was a light in his own that shone
like a blue flame. “Thanks!” he said again, as he released it. “You’re
very good, Miss Mortimer. But you mustn’t be seen with me, you know.
You’ve got to remember that I’m a swindler.”

The girl laughed aloud. It pleased her to feel that this taciturn man
had taken her into his confidence at last. “I shall remember,” she said
lightly.

And she went away, not only comforted, but gay of heart.

       *       *       *       *       *

During the remainder of the voyage, West was treated with extreme
coolness by every one. It did not seem to abash him in the least. He
came and went in the crowd with the utmost sang-froid, always
preoccupied, always self-contained. Cynthia observed him from a distance
with admiration. The man had taken her fancy. She was keenly interested
in his methods, as well as in his decidedly unusual personality. She
observed Rudd also, and noted the obvious suspicion with which he
regarded West. On the night before their arrival she saw the latter
alone for a moment, and whispered to him that Mr. Rudd seemed uneasy. At
which information West merely laughed sardonically. He was holding a
small parcel, to which, after a moment, he drew her attention.

“I was going to ask you to accept this,” he said. “It is nothing very
important, but I should like you to have it. Don’t open it before
to-morrow.”

“What is it?” asked Cynthia, in surprise.

He frowned in his abrupt way.

“It doesn’t matter; something connected with my profession. I shouldn’t
give it you, if I didn’t know you were to be trusted.”

“But–but”–she hesitated a little–”ought I to take it?”

He raised his shoulders.

“I shall give it to the captain for you, if you don’t. But I would
rather give it to you direct.”

In face of this, Cynthia yielded, feeling as if he compelled her.

“But mayn’t I open it?”

“No.” West’s eyes held hers for a second. “Not till to-morrow. And, in
case we don’t meet again, I’ll say good-bye.”

“But we shall meet in New York?” she urged, with a sudden sense of loss.
“Or perhaps in Boston? My father would really like to meet you.”

“Much obliged,” said West, with his grim smile. “But I’m not much of a
society man. And I don’t think I shall find myself in Boston at
present.”

“Then–then–I sha’n't see you again–ever?” Cynthia’s tone was
unconsciously tragic. Till that moment she had scarcely realised how
curiously strong an attraction this man held for her.

West’s expression changed. His emotionless blue eyes became suddenly
more blue, and intense with a vital fire. He leaned towards her as one
on the verge of vehement speech.

Then abruptly his look went beyond her, and he checked himself.

“Who knows?” he said carelessly. “Good-bye for the present, anyway! It’s
been a pleasant voyage.”

He straightened himself with the words, nodded, and turned aside without
so much as touching her hand.

And Cynthia, glancing round with an instinctive feeling of discomfiture,
saw Rudd with another man, standing watching them at the end of the
passage.

       *       *       *       *       *

In the dark of early morning they reached New York. Most of the
passengers decided to remain on board for breakfast, which was served at
an early hour in the midst of a hubbub and turmoil indescribable.

Cynthia, with her aunt and Archie, partook of a hurried meal in the
thick of the ever-shifting crowd. She looked in vain for West, her grey
eyes searching perpetually.

One friend after another came up to bid them good-bye, stood a little,
talking, and presently drifted away. The whole ship from end to end
hummed like a hive of bees.

She was glad when at length she was able to escape from the noisy
saloon. She had not slept well, and her nerves were on edge. The memory
of that interrupted conversation with West, of the confidence unspoken,
went with her continually. She had an almost feverish longing to see him
once more, even though it were in the heart of the crowd. He had been
about to tell her something. Of that she was certain. She had an
intense, an almost passionate desire to know what it was. Surely he
would not–he could not–go ashore without seeing her again!

She had not intended to open the packet he had given her till she was
ashore herself, but a palpitating curiosity tugged ever at her
resolution till at length she could resist it no longer. West was
nowhere to be seen, and she felt she must know more. It was intolerable
to be thus left in the dark. Through the scurrying multitude of
departing passengers, she began to make her way back to her cabin. Her
progress was of necessity slow, and once in a crowded corner she was
stopped altogether.

Two men were talking together close to her. Their backs were towards
her, and in the general confusion they did not observe her futile
impatience to pass.

“Oh, I knew the fellow was a wrong ‘un, all along,” were the first words
that filtered to the girl’s consciousness as she stood. “But I didn’t
think he was responsible for that card trick, I must say. Young Bathurst
looked so abominably hangdog.”

It was the Englishman, Norton, who spoke, and the man who stood with him
was Rudd. Cynthia realised the near presence of the latter with a
sensation of disgust. His drawling tones grated upon her intolerably.

“Waal,” he said, “it was just that card trick that opened my eyes–I
shouldn’t have noticed him, otherwise. I knew that young Bathurst was
square. He hasn’t the brains to be anything else. And when this chap
butted in with his thick-ribbed impudence, I guessed right then that we
hadn’t got a beginner to deal with. After that I watched for a bit, and
there were several little things that made me begin to reflect. So the
next evening I got a wireless message off to my partner in New York, and
I reckon that did the trick. When we came up alongside this morning, the
vultures were all ready for him. I took them to his cabin myself. There
was no fuss at all. He saw it was all up, and gave in without a murmur.
They were only just in time, though. In another thirty seconds, he would
have been off. It was a clever piece of work, I flatter myself, to net
Mr. Nat Verney so neatly.”

The Englishman began to laugh, but suddenly broke off short as a girl’s
face, white and quivering, came between them.

“Who is this man?” the high, breathless voice demanded. “Which–which is
Mr. Nat Verney?”

Rudd looked down at her through narrowed eyes. He was smiling–a small,
bitter smile.

“Waal, Miss Mortimer,” he began, “I reckon you have first right to
know—-”

She turned from him imperiously.

“You tell me,” she commanded Norton.

Norton looked genuinely uncomfortable, and, probably in consequence, he
answered her with a gruffness that sounded brutal.

“It was West. He has been arrested. His own fault entirely. No one would
have suspected him if he hadn’t been a fool, and given his own show
away.”

“He wasn’t a fool!” Cynthia flashed back fiercely. “He was my friend!”

“I shouldn’t be in too great a hurry to claim that distinction,”
remarked Rudd. “He’s about the best-known rascal in the two
hemispheres.”

But Cynthia did not wait to hear him. She had slipped past, and was
gone.

In her own cabin at last, she bolted the door and tore open that packet
connected with his profession which he had given her the night before.
It contained a roll of notes to the value of a hundred pounds, wrapped
in a sheet of notepaper on which was scrawled a single line: “With
apologies from the man who swindled you.”

There was no signature of any sort. None was needed! When Cynthia
finally left her cabin an hour later, her eyes were bright with that
brightness which comes from the shedding of many tears.