Nobody

Of a sudden his tone changed. "Oh, forgive me!" he pleaded. "I was a fool to ask. I might have known-I did know you didn't care for me. Only, I hoped, and I guess a man in love can't help letting his hopes make him foolish, especially when he sees the girl in trouble of some sort, needing what he can give her, love and protection-and when it's moonlight and there's music in the air!"

He checked himself with a lifted hand and stood for a moment, half smiling, as if made suddenly conscious of the pulsing rapture of those remote violins.

"That's what's made all the mischief," he complained: "that, and the way you look. It isn't a fair combination to work on a fellow, you know. Please don't say anything; you've said enough. I know very well what you mean, but I'd rather not hear it in one word of two letters-not to-night. I'm just foolish enough to prefer to go on hoping for a while, believing there was a bare chance I had misunderstood you."

He laughed half-heartedly, said "Good night" with an admirable air of accepting his dismissal as a matter of course, and marched off as abruptly as if reminded of an overdue appointment.

No other manoeuvre could have been more shrewdly calculated to advance his cause; nothing makes so compelling an appeal to feminine sympathies as a rejected suitor taking his punishment like a man; the emotional affinity of pity has been established ever since the invention of love.

Sally sank down mechanically upon a little marble seat near the spot where they had stood talking and stared without conscious vision out over the silvered sea.

Her thoughts were vastly unconcerned with the mysterious behaviour of Mrs. Standish and her brother, the inexplicable insolence of Mercedes Pride, the shattered bubble of her affair with Donald Lyttleton, the kindness of Mrs. Gosnold, or the riddle of the vanished jewelry.

Now and again people passed her and gave her curious glances. She paid them no heed. The fact that they went in pairs, male and female after their kind, failed to re-excite envy in her bosom.

There is deep satisfaction to be distilled from consciousness of the love of even an unwelcome lover.

She thought no longer unkindly but rather pitifully of poor, tactless, rough-shod Mr. Trego.

When at length she stirred and rose it was with a regretful sigh that, matters being as they were with her, she was unable to reward his devotion with something warmer than friendship only.

Friendship, of course, she could no more deny the poor man..

CHAPTER XV

FALSE WITNESS

Sally failed, however, fully to appreciate how long it was that she had rested there, moveless upon that secluded marble seat, spellbound in the preoccupation of those thoughts, at once long and sweet with the comfort of a solaced self-esteem, for which she had to thank the author of her first proposal of marriage.

She rose and turned back to Gosnold House only on the prompting of instinct, vaguely conscious that the night had now turned its nadir and the time was drawing near when she must present herself first to her employer with the tale of last night's doings, then to Savage to learn his version of the happenings in New York.

But by the time she reminded herself of these two matters she found that they had receded to a status of strangely diminished importance in her understanding. It was her duty, of course, a duty imposed upon her by her dependent position as much as by her affection for the lady, to tell Mrs. Gosnold all she knew without any reservation whatever; and it was equally her duty to herself, as a matter of common self-protection, to hear what Savage professed such anxiety to communicate. And not quite definitely realising that it was Mr. Trego's passion which overshadowed both of these businesses, she wondered mildly at her unconcern with either. Somehow she would gladly have sealed both lips and ears to them and gone on basking uninterruptedly in the warmth of her sudden self-complacence.

By no means the least remarkable property of the common phenomenon of love is the contentment which it never fails to kindle in the bosom of its object, regardless of its source. In a world where love is far more general than aversion, wherein the most hateful and hideous is frequently the most beloved, it remains true that even a king will strut with added arrogance because of the ardent glance of a serving-wench.

And so, failing to realise her tardiness, it was not unnatural that Sally, entering the house by that historic side door and ascending the staircase that led directly to her bedchamber, should think to stop a moment and consult the mirror for confirmation of Mr. Trego's implicit compliments.

As one result of this action, instigated in the first instance less by vanity than by desire to avoid the crowds at the main entrances, Sally uncovered another facet of mystery.

On entering, she left the side door heedlessly ajar, and there was enough air astir to shut it with a bang as she turned up the staircase. Two seconds later that bang was echoed by a door above, and a quick patter of light footfalls followed. But by the time Sally gained the landing there was no one visible in the length of the corridor from end to end of that wing.

Now the door of the room opposite her was wide open on a dark interior. And the room adjoining was untenanted, as she knew. It seemed impossible that the second slam could have been caused by any door other than that of her own bedchamber. Yet why should anyone have trespassed there but one of the housemaids? And if the trespasser had been a housemaid, why that sudden and furtive flight and swift disappearance from the corridor?

Her speculations on this point were both indefinite and short-lived. She thought her hearing must have deceived her; a hasty look round the room discovered nothing superficially out of place, and the little gilt clock on her dressing-table told her that she was already seven minutes behind time. She delayed only for one hasty survey of the flushed face with star-bright eyes that the mirror revealed, and then with an inarticulate reflection that, after all, one could hardly blame Mr. Trego very severely, Sally caught up her long dark cloak and made off down the corridor, past the head of the main staircase, to the door of Mrs. Gosnold's boudoir.

A voice sharp with vexation answered her knock; she entered to find its owner fuming, and not only that, but surprisingly en déshabillé. The dress of Queen Elizabeth was gone, and Mrs. Gosnold stood on the threshold of her bedchamber clothed simply in undergarments and impatience.

"Why are you so late?" she demanded. "I was beginning to be afraid.. But thank Heaven you're here! You very nearly spoiled everything, but there's still time. Come in."

She led the way into her bedchamber, and without acknowledging Sally's murmur of startled apology, waved an impetuous hand at her.

"Quick!" she demanded. "Get out of that costume at once!"

Her maid was already at Sally's side, fumbling with pins and hooks, before the girl recovered from her astonishment sufficiently to seek enlightenment.

"But what's the matter? What have I done? What-?"

"Nothing much-merely almost upset the applecart for me!" Mrs. Gosnold laughed in grim humour, her own fingers busily aiding the maid's. "Come, step out of that skirt, please. If you'd been two minutes later.. I'm simply going to pretend I'm you for ten minutes or so," she explained, lowering the shimmering gray Quaker skirt over her own shoulders. "I'm going to meet Walter Savage in your stead."

"But-"

"But me no buts. I heard enough there at the window, before you came on the scene, to make me very suspicious of that young rascal, even more so than I had every right to be from what you had told me. Now I mean to learn the rest, find out precisely what devilment he's up to."

"He only wants to tell me-"

"There's nothing he can possibly have to say to you that he couldn't have said a hundred times tonight in as many corners of the house and grounds without a soul hearing a word or thinking it odd that two young people should be exchanging confidences-and both of you masked into the bargain."

Sally, now entirely divested of her masquerade, resignedly shrugged herself into the black silk cloak for lack of a better negligee.

"I don't understand what you can suspect," she said dubiously.

"I don't suspect anything; but I'm going to find out everything."

"But aren't you afraid-"

"Of what, pray'?" Mrs. Gosnold demanded with appropriate asperity.

"I mean, don't you think he'll know?"

"Nothing in the shadow of those trees, with my mask and that cape to disguise the fact that I'm a bit more matronly than yourself-worse luck!"

"But your voice-"

"Haven't you ever read about 'guarded accents' in novels? Those will be mine, precisely, when I talk to my graceless nephew. I shan't speak once above a whisper-and I defy any man to tell my whisper from yours or any other woman's for that matter. Don't flatter yourself, my dear! I shall fool him perfectly; there's precious little to choose between any two women in the dark!"

Already she was almost finished dressing, and as yet Sally hadn't had a chance to breathe a word about her own information.

"But there's something I must tell you," she insisted, suddenly reminded.

"About what?"

"Last night-things that happened after everybody had gone to bed. You knew I was restless. I saw several things I haven't told you about. You ought to know. They may clear up the mystery of the theft."

"I already know all about that," Mrs. Gosnold declared calmly.

"About Mr. Lyttleton and the boat and the signals-"

Mrs. Gosnold turned sharply from her mirror. "What's this? Why didn't you tell me before?"