CHAPTER II

A STRATEGIC MOVEMENT WHICH SECURES VICTORY WHILE SIMULATING RETREAT

Mrs. Spencer, the train of her mauve, cotton-back satin tea-gown thrown negligently over her arm, held aside the strings of the beaded chick, letting her guest pass into the inner hall. As she moved across to the open door of the much be-frilled and be-palmed little drawing-room, they rippled back into place behind her with a rattle of cane and tinkle of glass. The familiar sound gave Challoner, who, heavily deliberate, deposited gloves and hat on the hall table, a catch in his throat. He found the first sight of Mrs. Gwynnie in her flimsy satin, cream lace, and rather tired turquoise-blue ribbons, upsetting. She was a straw-colored, insignificant-featured, fairly tall, fairly plump, fairly graceful, uncomfortably small-waisted woman; looking, at a distance, five-and-twenty, at close quarters, nearer five-and-thirty, cheaply pretty and effective, though slightly washed out. And this latter quality, or absence of quality, in her appearance took hold of Challoner now with an appeal of pathos which he resented and made an effort to ignore. It did not tend to the improvement of his manners or of his temper.

"Since when have you taken to answering the front door yourself?" he inquired, in tones of heavy banter. "Been having the periodic rumpus with the maids again?"

"Oh no; the maids are quite good, thank you," she answered, punctuating her speech with a little meaningless, neighing laugh habitual to her. "I'm on excellent terms with both of them, for a wonder. But it's the cook's evening out, and I gave Esther leave to go with her. I didn't think we should have any particular use for them." Again she laughed. "But didn't you get my note?"

"Yes, I got it right enough," Challoner said. He had followed her into the drawing-room and stood with his hands behind him and his back to the hissing gas-fire, looking down at his seal-brown frieze trousers. The suit was almost new, yet the knees showed signs of bagging already. This vexed him. "That is why I am here. You said you wanted to see me. So I stayed and dined in town to save time, and came on just as I was."

"So I perceive," she put in with meaning.

Challoner continued to contemplate the knees of his trousers. Yet he was well aware that her eyes were fixed on another item of his costume--namely, his waistcoat, crocheted in red and white quarter-inch squares, and finished with a gray cloth border and flat white horn buttons. Mrs. Spencer had worked it for him last year as a Christmas present. He wished to goodness he had not happened to be wearing it to-night!

"Yes," he repeated, without looking up, "I got your note right enough. But, do you know, I begin to think I get rather too many of those notes. You've fallen into the habit of writing too frequently. Between ourselves, it worries me a lot."

"Why?" she asked.

He shifted his weight from one foot to the other.

"Why? Because I have some regard for your reputation, I imagine. I don't care a twopenny damn on my own account, of course. My back's broad enough to bear the consequences of my own actions, even if they are disagreeable. But it is quite another matter for you; and I must say you're getting very reckless. That's not fair by me. I've been awfully careful from the first. But where's the use of my taking extensive precautions to shield you if you go and invite gossip like this?"

"Don't be cross and scold me," Mrs. Spencer said, archly.

She had placed herself on the sofa at right angles to the fireplace, drawing the train of her tea-gown aside so as to leave room for a second occupant of this, the most solid seat in the room. The rest of the furniture ran to wicker chairs, colored Madras muslin veiling their original cretonne coverings, and tables, whatnots, cabinets, and flower-pot stands with mottled brown-and-biscuit bamboo frames and plaited straw tops, brackets, and shelves to them.

"I won't write so often if you really think it is dangerous," she added.

"It is dangerous," Challoner asserted, ignoring the invitation to share the sofa. "Think for yourself. At Heatherleigh there are my servants. At the office there are my clerks. Do you suppose they haven't tongues in their mouths or eyes in their heads? If that does not constitute danger, I'll thank you to tell me what does."

"But you forbid me to telephone, so how am I to communicate with you unless I write? You call so seldom. I hardly ever see you now."

"Oh! come," he remonstrated, "I was here Sunday week."

"But that's Beattie's afternoon at home. You know I always give it up to her friends. And a whole crowd of them was here Sunday week--Fred Lawley, and the Busbridge boys, and Marion Chase. I didn't get three words with you."

Challoner glanced at her in sharp anxiety.

"Fred Lawley come up to the scratch yet?" he asked.

"If you mean has he proposed, I am sure I can't tell you. I don't know myself. I suppose if he had, Bee would have told me. He seems tremendously gone on her. But you never can be sure of a man till your engagement has been publicly announced."

It was Challoner who laughed a little this time.

"Not quite invariably even then," he said.

His chin settled into the V of the turned-back corners of his high shirt-collar, while his eyes returned to contemplation of those vexatiously baggy trousers. Mrs. Spencer began to speak, but he hulled down her voice by asking, rather loudly:

"By the way, where is Miss Beattie?"

"Oh, she's gone over to Marychurch to the Quartermains. They asked her to stop the night because the Progressive Whist Club meets at their house. I think those club parties awfully slow, but Bee wouldn't miss one on any account. They don't play for money, only prizes."

"China lucky pigs or a black velvet cat, home-made, with a pink ribbon around its neck--I know the style," Challoner returned. "Fred Lawley's the attraction, I imagine, rather than those high-class works of art."

"I don't think he'll be there. Bee said something about his having gone to Southampton to join his ship. You seem very interested in Fred Lawley. But I told you in my note Bee was away to-night?"

"Very likely you did--I really don't remember," he replied, hastily.

For he detected, or fancied he detected, a suggestion in her tone and words eminently unwelcome and embarrassing. He felt the brick-dust red of his face and neck deepening to crimson; and this both angered and alarmed him. Notwithstanding repudiation of sentiment, was the soft side still uppermost? That would not do. He must buckram himself more resolutely against poor Mrs. Gwynnie's fascinations, and bring matters to a head at once.

"But that reminds me--speaking of Beattie, I mean--what do you want done about the lease of this house? It will be up at the end of the half quarter."

So far Mrs. Spencer had lolled in attitudes of studied ease upon the sofa. Now she sat bolt upright, clasping her small waist with both hands and advancing her bust. The little neighing laugh preceded, instead of punctuating, her speech. Challoner observed a nervous ring in the quality of it.

"Oh! well that rests more with you than with me, doesn't it? Of course I hadn't forgotten the lease is nearly up. It was

## partly--partly"--with emphasis--"about the house I wanted to see you

to-night, and I think it awfully sweet of you to ask what I want done--"

She paused, while her auditor, in growing uneasiness, again shifted his weight, dancing-bear fashion, from one to the other foot.

"Yes, it's awfully sweet of you to put it that way," she repeated. "And I quite know I ought to make up my mind. I suppose, on the whole, I had better ask you to renew the lease for a year, or six months, unless--unless--"

"Unless what?" Challoner snapped.

He could have bitten his tongue out immediately after, perceiving how woefully he had blundered. For, although he carefully abstained from looking at her, he knew that the light leaped into Mrs. Spencer's eyes and the pink into her cheek, while even her straw-colored hair, through the intricate convolutions of which a wisp of turquoise chiffon was twisted, took on a livelier tint. She blossomed, in short; her faded, crumpled, played-out prettiness of person and manner transformed into the younger, smarter, more convinced, and consequently more convincing, prettiness which had raised an evil spirit of covetousness in him when he first met her, and continued to provoke that covetousness until--well, until something very much more profitable, socially and financially, in the shape of possibly obtainable womanhood had risen above his horizon. The moment was a very nasty one for Joseph Challoner; since it could not but occur to him that, while responsible for much existing damage, he was about to render himself liable for far heavier damages in the near future. This taxed his courage. Again, consciously, he "funked it"; so that for some few seconds Gwynneth Spencer's fate hung in the balance. But only for a few seconds did her fate so hang. Ambition, and a brute obstinacy in face of attempted coercion, a certain animal necessity to prove to himself the fact of his own strength, carried the day. Challoner turned his coat once and for all, in as far as poor light-weight Gwynnie Spencer was concerned, letting the underlying element of cruelty and cunning in his nature have free play.

"Unless what?" she echoed, laughing thinly. "Why, unless you have any other plan to propose, Joe; any arrangement which you'd like better and which I should like better than just sticking on here indefinitely at Robin's Rest."

Challoner had moved away to a rickety little bamboo table, set out with cheap flower-vases and knick-knacks. Absently he picked up a photograph, in dilapidated silver frame, from among these treasures and stood fingering it. The coat of many colors was fairly turned; yet at the sound of his pet name Challoner started, letting the object he held fall to the ground, where, to his relief, silver, leather, glass, cardboard and portrait incontinently parted company.

"I need not put it more plainly, need I?" she quavered, an upward break in her voice. "But, of course, if you have any other plan to propose there would be no occasion to bother about the renewal of the lease."

Challoner knelt on one knee, his large hands groping over the carpet as he gathered up the _débris_.

"Bless me!" he said, "the wretched thing's smashed. What a nuisance! I hope you haven't any special affection for it. I am awfully sorry. Can't imagine how I came to drop it! Stupid of me, wasn't it? I must get you a new one. I saw some uncommonly tasty silver frames in a shop in the Marychurch Road to-day. I'll go in and buy you one the first time I pass. Tell your girl to be careful when she sweeps in the morning, though, for the glass has splintered all over the place."

He rose ponderously to his feet, and for the first time since his arrival looked full at her.

"Peuh!" he went on, blowing out his breath and laying one hand across the small of his back. "It strikes me I'm growing confoundedly stiff. Old age comes on apace, eh, Mrs. Gwynnie? Not in your case, I don't mean. You are one of the sort that wears well. I haven't seen you in better looks for months. Some other plan to propose, did you say? Yes, I have, otherwise I mightn't have been quite so ready to eat a beastly bad dinner down-town, so as to be free to come on here early to see you."

His manner had become almost boisterously jocose. Casting out the last remnant of pity, he cast out the last remnant of fear of her even in her present heightened prettiness. He came round behind the sofa and perched himself on the back of it, sitting sideways, looking down at her flushed, expectant, unimportant little face, and quite jauntily swinging his leg.

"You'll not forget to tell them about the broken glass?" he queried, parenthetically, "or you'll have somebody getting badly cut. As to my alternative plan now, Mrs. Gwynnie, I have been thinking things over too; and I feel, like you, they can't very well continue as they are. This Robin's Rest arrangement, which served its purpose well enough at first, is pretty thoroughly played out. We may regret that, but it is. And, to tell you the truth, Mrs. Gwyn, I have been troubled by some little qualms of conscience lately. Beattie's affairs have been on my mind a lot."

"Beattie, Beattie?" she broke in, shrilly. "What on earth has Bee to do with it?"

"The question is not so much what Beattie has to do with it"--laying stress on the last word--"as what it has to do with Beattie," Challoner returned, in a benevolent, heavy-father tone. "In my opinion she has been a mighty good little sister to you, and she must be mortally tired of keeping her eyes shut and playing gooseberry by this time. I see no reason why her prospects should be sacrificed. She's a perfect right to a look in of her own, poor girl."

The answer to the above might appear obvious. But Challoner gauged the mental caliber of the person he dealt with. Mrs. Spencer's shallow, trivial, fair-weather nature was ill-adapted to meet any great crisis. Her small brain worked slowly, and with a permanent inclination toward the irrelevant and indirect. He counted upon these defects of perception and logic, and he was not disappointed.

"But--but, when I marry," she said, essaying not very successfully to practise her little laugh, "I always meant to make it a condition that Bee should share my home."

"Very nice and thoughtful. Quite right of you," Challoner replied, still benevolently jocose. "Only I was talking about Beattie's matrimonial projects just now, not about yours, you see. And you are to blame, Mrs. Gwyn. You have been careless. I don't want to pile on the agony, but you have been most awfully careless. There is ever so much gossip going round. I am afraid people are beginning to look just a little askance. And what reflects on you reflects on your sister. I have taken the trouble to make inquiries, and, from all I hear, Fred Lawley is a very decent young fellow and will come into some money when his grandfather dies. He is second officer now, and stands well for promotion. The pay is above the average, too, on that Cape line. His people are in a good position; quite gentlefolk, a solid old clerical family--one of his uncles a canon of some cathedral or other, I forget which. It would be a first-class marriage for Beattie. But you cannot expect people like that to be best pleased at his taking up with a girl out of such a queer stable as--well, as this one, Mrs. Gwyn. Therefore I do not think I should be acting in your sister's interests if I renewed the lease of this house for you."

"I see that," she said, her aspect brightening. "I see what you are coming round to. How you have thought it all out! I see--of course--go on."

"I shall not renew the lease of this house," he repeated, slowly, "but I propose you and Miss Beattie shall move, bag and baggage, to Marychurch, where--"

"Marychurch? Why? I thought you meant Heatherleigh! Why? Do you want to get rid of us? Oh!" she gasped, "oh!"

"Yes," Challoner said, jocosity waning somewhat. "Exactly, Mrs. Gwynnie. How quick you are! I do want to get rid of you, for your own good, and my good, and Beattie's good as well--principally for hers. This gossip must be stopped. I cannot have it. It is unpleasant for me, but for you it is disastrous. At Marychurch Beattie has the Quartermains and plenty of other friends. It will be handy for her young man, too, when his vessel is at Southampton. You would see ever so much more society there than you do here. And I can give you an uncommonly nice house, very superior in every respect to this one--Sunnyside, the white house with a veranda, opposite the new Borough Recreation Ground in Wilmer Road. Nominally it belongs to old Manby, but actually it belongs to me. It has been standing empty since Christmas, and Manby will think himself only too lucky to let it to any client of mine at a low rent--which I pay, of course. No one need know anything about that."

Challoner talked on, swinging his leg jauntily, though every nerve in his big body was strained with the effort to apprehend and follow the workings of his hearer's mind. So far, save for that passing outbreak, she had received his admonitions and propositions more reasonably than he had anticipated. So he must exercise patience, must not rush her; but give the idea time to sink in.

"Manby's property is mortgaged up to the hilt," he went on, "and he is more than half a year behind with the interest. If he doesn't come into my terms I shall threaten to foreclose. He knows I have got him between my finger and thumb, poor old chap, and he goes in terror of the time I may begin to squeeze. I admit it does seem rather rough on him, for he is in this hole through no fault of his own. His family has owned the property for three generations. But his business has dwindled to nothing, and that compelled him to raise money. The co-operative stores at Stourmouth and Southampton are crushing him and old-fashioned, jog-along, retail tradesmen like him out of existence. The same thing is happening all over the country. Men of his type have neither enterprise nor capital to compete with those large company concerns."

She sat so still, listening with such apparent docility, that Challoner judged it safe to quit generalities.

"Sunnyside shall be properly done up and the sanitation inspected," he said. "I am willing to spend from seventy to a hundred on the place. It is bound to be my own sooner or later, so any money I lay out on it will come back to me in the end. Too, I want to do the thing handsomely for you, Mrs. Gwyn. You and Beattie could go out by tram to-morrow, or next day, and have a look at the place. I'll advise Manby by telephone to-morrow, first thing, I have found him a very desirable tenant, so that he may open the house. Better make a list of any little odds and ends you may think need doing. If you like, you can choose the wall-papers yourself."

"That's awfully sweet of you. But supposing I don't like the house when I see it? I know I am rather fanciful and particular," she put in, with her little neighing laugh.

"I'll guarantee you'll like it," he returned. "It's just the sort of house to appeal to your taste. Really high class, nothing cheap or tawdry about it, built somewhere in the early seventies, tip-top style in its own line, quite a gentlewoman's house."

Mrs. Spencer fingered the lace and ribbons of her tea-gown negligently, advanced her left foot, studied the pointed toe of her beaded slipper, then looked up archly in Challoner's face.

"But supposing," she said, "I really don't want a house at Marychurch at all--what then? Supposing I really prefer to remain at Stourmouth? Supposing I am really determined to stay on here at our dear old Robin's Rest?"

Challoner's expression darkened. He descended from his graceful perch and stood behind the sofa, towering above her.

"Very sorry, Mrs. Gwyn," he replied, "but I regret to say it can't be done. It doesn't suit me to have you stay on at Robin's Rest."

"But why?" she insisted.

Challoner hesitated for an instant, decided to make exact truth subservient to expediency, and spoke.

"Why? Well, if you press the point, not only for the very good reasons which I have already given you at some length, but because I want the house for another tenant. Pewsey, my junior partner, has asked for it for his mother. I am anxious to oblige Pewsey. I have promised him possession some time in the June quarter."

"You have let Robin's Rest, let our house, Joe, our own dear little house, without ever telling me? Let it over my head?"

Looking at her upturned face, pretty, scared, brainless, Challoner's memory played a queer trick on him, harking back to scenes of long ago, at which, as a schoolboy, he had more than once--to his shame--assisted, on the Fairmead at Marychurch, the great, flat, fifty-acre grass meadow which lies on the outskirts of the little town between the River Wilmer and the Castle Moat. He saw, with startling vividness of detail, the agonized leaping rush of the shrill-squealing rabbits, wire-netting barrier in front of them and red-jawed, hot-breathing dogs behind. Even then he had turned somewhat sick at the hellish pastime, although excitement, and a natural disposition to bully all creatures weaker than himself, made him yell and curse and urge on the dogs with the roughest of the crowd. He sickened now, watching this hapless, foolish, bewildered woman double and turn in desperate effort to elude pursuing, self-created Fate, only to find herself brought up short against the irrefragable logic of the situation as demonstrated by his own relentless common-sense. Yet, even while he sickened, excitement gained on him, and his bullying instinct began to find satisfaction in the inhuman sport.

"Yes, Mrs. Gwynnie," he said, "I own I have done just that--let Robin's Rest over your head. I saw it was the kindest thing, both by you and by your sister, though it might strike you as a bit arbitrary at first. My duty is to stop this infernal gossip at all costs. If you won't take proper care of your own reputation I must take care of it for you--isn't that as clear as mud?"

"But I don't want to go away," she cried, again missing the point. "I refuse to be sent away. You have no right to interfere. It isn't your place. You can't order me about and push me aside like that. I am a lady, and I refuse to put up with such treatment. It is very rude of you and quite unsuitable. Everybody would feel that. I shall appeal to my friends. I shall tell every one I know about it."

"Oh! as you please, of course. But just what will you tell them?" Challoner asked.

"Why, the whole story--the whole truth."

"As you please," he repeated. "Only I'm afraid it's not a story likely, when told, to enlarge your local visiting-list."

Challoner perched on the back of the sofa again, domineering, masterful, leaning down and looking her straight in the eyes.

"See here, Gwynnie," he said. "You're in a tight place. Listen to reason. Don't be a fool and throw away your last chance in a pet."

"I mean to expose you. I will tell everybody, everybody," she cried.

"No," Challoner said, "you won't. I give you credit for more worldly wisdom, more self-respect, more good feeling, than that. The injury you might do me, by publishing this little love-passage of ours, would not be a patch upon the injury you would do yourself. You don't want to commit social suicide, do you, and find every door shut in your face? Tell any of these friends of yours, the Woodfords, Mrs. Paull, Marion Chase, and they'd avoid you as they would a leper, drop you like a hot potato, cut you dead, whether they believed your charming little tale or not. You are fond of company, Mrs. Gwynnie--a gregarious being. You would not the least enjoy being left out in the cold all by yourself. And there is another point. I am perfectly willing to pay for my pleasure honestly, as a man should, but it is not wise to tax my good nature too far. Doing your best to blast my reputation is not exactly the way to make me feel kindly or act generously toward you. There would be no more nice houses, rent free, Mrs. Gwyn, rates and taxes paid; no more quarterly allowance, I am afraid. I should cut off supplies, my dear. Your widow's pension is paid in rupees, remember, not in sterling; and the value of the rupee is hardly likely to go up. So you had better look at the question all round before you take the neighborhood into your confidence. Listen here, I will give you a hundred a year and the Marychurch house--"

"But if I tell everybody how you have treated me, public opinion will force you to marry me," she cried, with an air of announcing an annihilating truth.

Challoner swung his big body from side to side contemptuously.

"Faugh!" he said. "Public opinion will do nothing of the sort. You forget it is a case of my word against yours, and that, considering our relative positions, my word will count a jolly sight most."

"But you dare not deny--"

"Oh, indeed yes, I dare," Challoner broke out. "I can deny and shall deny--or rather should, for it won't ever come to the test--that your accusations have any foundation whatsoever in fact. If a woman is mad enough to incriminate herself she must do so. But a man always denies, at least every man of honor and proper feeling does. No, no; be sensible. Think of Beattie. Think of yourself. Don't put all your eggs in one basket. You are a taking woman still, Mrs. Gwyn. Give yourself another chance. For remember, you haven't a shred of evidence to offer in support of your attack. You have bombarded me with notes, but, except as lawyer to client, I have never written you two lines in my life." He paused. "No, thank goodness! even at my hottest I kept my head screwed on sufficiently the right way to avoid the old letter-writing trap."

"Then from the first, the very first," she gasped, "did you never mean to marry me?"

Challoner had the grace to hesitate, look down at the floor, and lower his voice as he answered.

"No, my dear girl, never--from the day I found I could get what I wanted at the cheaper rate."

Gwynneth Spencer stared blankly in front of her. Then, as her small, slow-working brain began to take in the measure of her own disgrace, while the poor house of cards in which she trusted toppled and tumbled flat, her silly, little, neighing laugh rose to a shriek. Beating the air with both hands, she flung herself at full length on the sofa, her body convulsed from head to foot and her throat torn by hysterical cries and sobs. Challoner turned his back, put his hands over his ears. The squealing of the mangled rabbits, on the Fairmead, had been a lullaby compared with this! But he found it useless to try and shut out the sounds. Piercing, discordant, rasping, they echoed through the room. They must be heard next door. Heard out in the road. Heard, so it seemed to Challoner, through the length and breadth of Stourmouth. Must resound, startling the high respectabilities of the Baughurst Park Ward. Must break in upon the dignified seclusion of the Tower House itself, searing his name with infamy.

He turned round, leaned down over the back of the sofa. He felt the greatest reluctance to touch the shrieking, struggling woman, but the noise was unendurable. He caught both her wrists, in one hand, and pinned them down among the ribbons and laces at her waist. The other hand he laid upon her open and distorted mouth.

"Hush," he said. "Be quiet. Hush, you fool! Gwynnie, be a good girl. Hush, Gwyn. For God's sake, don't go on like this! Hush--pull yourself together. Try to control yourself. My dear little woman--curse you, leave off your caterwauling, you damned hell-cat. Do you hear, hold your infernal row! Gwynnie love, darling, chummy little sweetheart! Leave off, will you, or you'll make me smother you. Leave off.--Ah! my God! that's better.--Oh! Oh!--ouf!"

The next thing Challoner knew clearly was that he stood in the little dining-room. Upon the dinner-table, under the dim light of the turned-down-gas-jets, a square spirit decanter, a syphon of soda, and a couple of glasses were set out on a round red-lacquer tray. He remembered often to have seen them set out thus. But, for the moment, he could not recall why he was there or what he came for. He felt very tired. His hands shook, the veins stood out on his forehead, and great drops of perspiration ran down his face. He would be uncommonly glad of some brandy. Then he started with a sudden movement of disgust. He might be brutal, cynical, callous, but there were depths to which he could not descend. Never again could he eat or drink in this house.

He remembered what he came for. A sound away in the offices arrested his attention. The maids had come in, he supposed. He was glad of that. He poured some brandy into a glass, and, crossing the hall, went back into the drawing-room, shutting the door softly behind him. Mrs. Spencer lay quite still, the fit of hysteric violence spent. Her face was clay-colored. Her lips blue. Her eyes closed. Her body limp and inert. She cried a little weakly and quietly.

Challoner knelt down beside the sofa, slipped one hand under the back of her head, with its elaborately dressed hair and wisp of turquoise chiffon, and held the glass to her lips.

"Drink this," he said, in a thick whisper. "It will help to bring you round. It will do you good."

Then, as she sipped it, drawing away now and then and spluttering a little as the raw spirit burned her tongue and throat, he went on:

"You are going to be sensible and not throw away your chance?"

"No--I mean yes," she said.

"You will take Beattie over to Marychurch to look at the house?"

"Yes--oh! yes."

"I'll give you a hundred and fifty a year--fifty more than I promised. You can do quite nicely on that?"

"Yes--thank you--yes."

"And as long as you keep your part of the bargain I'll keep mine. If you play me false and talk--"

"I sha'n't talk," she said, feebly and fretfully. "Why should I talk now it's no use?"

"Ah," Challoner returned, "I am very glad you have come to your senses, Mrs. Gwyn. I believed, give it a little thought, you'd see it all in a reasonable light. That's right."

He rose and went out into the hall again, carrying the glass; put it down, took up his gloves and hat, crossed to the door leading to the offices, opened it and called.

A young woman, in a trim black serge coat and skirt and pink sailor hat, appeared in the kitchen doorway with a knowing and slightly disconcerting smirk.

"Look here, Esther," Challoner said, "Mrs. Spencer has been extremely unwell. It was most fortunate I happened to call in to-night. If I hadn't, I don't quite know what would have become of her. She ought not to be left alone in the house. Next time Miss Beattie is away, mind both of you do not go out. It is not safe."

He felt among the loose coins in his trousers pocket; laid hold of a sovereign, considered that it was too much--might have the flavor of a bribe about it. Found a couple of half-crowns, drew them out and put them into the young woman's hand.

"You understand what I say? Never let your mistress be alone in the house."

Once outside in the road, Challoner took off his hat, walking slowly. He was grateful for the freshness and the soothing half-dark. He had gone about fifty yards when the blond road seemed to lurch. That horrible shrieking laughter was in his ears--or was it only the squealing of the tortured rabbits? He turned giddy, laid hold of the top of some garden palings for support. A spasm contracted his throat. He retched, vomited. And then passed onward, homeward, through the chill, moist fragrance of the spring night.

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