Nobody

He put his arms once more round her shoulders, and she did not resist him, but none the less held her head up and back, eying him steadily.

"I love you desperately, but I can't ask you to marry me until I get the permission of my family. Till then.. is there any reason.? Be kind to me, be sweet to me, O sweetest of women! I'm mad, mad about you!"

With no more warning he lowered his head, fastening his lips to the curve of her throat; and discovered suddenly and definitely his error. In a twinkling it was a savage animal he held in his arms, and before he knew what was happening she had broken his grasp and he was reeling back with a head that rang from the impact of an open hand upon his ear.

"You shrew!" he chattered. "You infernal little vixen! And I thought-!"

He sprang toward her, beside himself, with a purpose that failed only through the intervention of a third party.

A man swinging suddenly round the end of the hedge shouldered between Lyttleton and the object of his rage-a man whose bulk, in the loose flannels of a lounge suit, seemed double that of Lyttleton.

"Oh, here!" said Trego impatiently, but without raising his voice. "Come, come!" He caught Lyttleton's wrists and forced them down. "Don't be an idiot-as well as a cad. Do you want to rouse the household? If you do, and get kicked out, you'll never get another chance on this island, my friend."

"Damn your impudence!" Lyttleton stuttered, sufficiently recalled to his senses to guard his tone, and wrenched at his wrists. "Let me go! I'll-"

"Sure I'll let you go," Trego agreed cheerfully. "But unless you want a thrashing in the presence of a lady, you'll do nothing foolish."

With this he released Mr. Lyttleton in such wise that he was an instant later picking himself up from the gravel path.

And while he was picking himself up he was also reflecting swiftly, this notwithstanding that Sally was no longer present to be a stay upon their brawling.

If his look was vicious, his tone was subdued as he stood brushing off the dust of his downfall.

"Lucky you came when you did," he said, with an effort to seem composed. "I presume I ought to thank you for knocking me about. This confounded temper of mine will get me into serious trouble yet if I'm not careful. I was driven pretty nearly wild by that little devil-"

"Cut it right there!" Trego interrupted sharply. "I don't know anything about your row-didn't hear a word that passed between you two-and it's none of my business. But if there's any blame to be borne, you'd better shoulder it yourself, for I warn you, I'm not going to hear any woman called names by a pup like you!"

CHAPTER X

LEGERDEMAIN

With a mind half distracted, the battlefield of a dozen unhappy emotions of which the most coherent were seething self-reproach and frantic irritation with Trego (why must it have been he, of all men?) Sally inconsiderately left the two to conclude their quarrel without an audience-took to her heels incontinently and sped like a hunted shadow across the open lawn. She flung through the side door and left it wide, stumbled blindly up-stairs to her bedchamber door, and shut this last behind her with no anticipation so fond as that of solitude and freedom to cry her eyes out.

But she had no more than turned from the door toward her bed, in the same movement shrugging off her black cloak and letting it fall regardless to the floor, when she became aware that solitude was no more in that room, that she shared it with an alien Presence-a shape of misty pallor, filling the armchair, silhouetted vaguely against the moonlight rectangle of the window.

And she faltered and stopped stock-still, with a strangled whimper, due in part to sheer surprise, but mostly to semi-superstitious dread.

The Presence did not move; but she was frightfully aware of the fixed regard of its coldly hostile eyes.

"Who are you?" she demanded in a choking whisper. "What are you doing here? What do you want?"

"Where have you been?" the Presence retorted in a level voice instantly identified as that of Mrs. Standish. "What have you been doing" – a spectral arm gestured vaguely toward the terrace-"out there?"

Sally took firm hold of herself and mustered all her wit against this emergency.

"I went out," she said slowly, "because I couldn't sleep, and-everything seemed so lovely.."

"Dressed like that!"

Profound scorn informed this comment. The girl writhed, but held herself well in hand.

"It was so late," she explained, "I didn't think it possible there'd be anybody else about."

"Of course you didn't." The woman's tone was saturated with hateful innuendo. "On the other hand, you soon discovered your mistake, didn't you?"

Sally muttered a sullen "Yes."

"You're wise not to lie I to me," her patroness remarked with just a suspicion of satisfaction. "I knew, you see. I've been sitting here, waiting, the better part of an hour, listening to you two bickering behind the hedge. You little fool!"

Sally said nothing. Her mood was all obsessed now with the conviction that this was the end to her life of a moth. An end to everything; come morning and she must be cast forth in disgrace, to go back to.

She choked upon an importunate sob and dug nails into the palms of her hands.

"Who was the man?" Mrs. Standish pursued inexorably.

Then she didn't know!

"Does it matter?" Sally fenced.

"Certainly. I insist upon knowing. Remember your position here-and mine. I have assumed responsibility for you; but I cannot permit you to make me answerable for the antics of a man-crazy woman. If you can't behave yourself and refrain from annoying my aunt's guests, you must go. I thought you understood that."

"Of course," the girl muttered. "You didn't think I expected anything else, did you?"

"Who was the man you followed out there?"

The calculated offensiveness of this was balanced by its sudden revelation to Sally's mind of the fact that Mrs. Standish didn't know there had been two men. It was, however, true that the window did not command a view of the approach to the side door.

"Are you going to tell me?"

"Please, Mrs. Standish, I'd rather not."

"Think again, my girl, and don't forget the circumstances under which I was persuaded, against my better judgment, to introduce you here."

"What do you mean?"

"Have you forgotten you were caught in the act of burglarising my house-that I first saw you wearing clothes stolen from me? You told a story, but how do I know it was true? You may well have been an accomplice of the ruffian who nearly killed my brother."

"That's hardly likely, is it?"

"How am I to judge? You may have quarrelled and turned on him in revenge. Judged by your conduct here, I'm sure you're capable of anything. Or you may have thought you saw a way to win greater profit by aiding my brother."

"That's all nonsense," Sally retorted hotly, "and you know it."

If dismissal from Gosnold House were inevitable, then there was no reason why she should not call her soul her own.

A pause was filled by the dramatic effect of Mrs. Standish nobly holding her temper in leash.

"When are you going to answer my question?"