She submitted without a hint of resistance. But she was trembling violently, and the contact with his hand was as fire to her blood.

Pausing, he stared and laughed uncertainly.

"Of all people!" he said in an undertone. "I never for an instant thought of you!"

Controlling her voice tolerably, she asked directly: "How did you get up again without my seeing you?"

"Simply enough—by the steps of the place next door. I saw you watching me—saw your head over the edge of the landing, black against the sky—and knew I'd never know who it was, unless by strategy. So I came up the other way and cut across to head you off."

He added, after a pause, with a semi-apologetic air: "What do you mean by it, anyway'?"

"What—?"

"Watching me this way—spying on me—?"

"But I didn't mean to. I was as surprised to see you as you were, just now, to see me."

"Honestly?"

His eyes searched hers suspiciously. Flushing, she endeavoured to assume some little dignity—drew up, lifted her chin, resumed possession of her hand.

"Of course," she said in an injured voice.

"Sure Mrs.—sure nobody sent you to spy on me?"

"Mr. Lyttleton!"

"I want to believe you."

"You've no right not to!"

"But what, will you tell me, are you doing out here this time of night?"

"I came out because I wanted to—I was restless, couldn't sleep."

He reflected upon this doubtfully. "Funny freak," he remarked.

"You're impertinent!"

"I don't mean to be. Forgive me. I'm only puzzled—"

"So am I puzzled," she retorted with spirit. "Suppose you tell me what you're doing out here at this time of night—down on the beach—anxious to escape notice. If you ask me, I call that a funnier freak than mine!"

"Quite so," he agreed soberly; "and a very reasonable retort. Only I can't tell you. It's—er—a private matter."

"So I presumed—"

"Look here, Miss Manwaring; this is a serious business with me. Give me your word—-"

"What makes that essential? Why do you think I'd lie—to you '?"

It was just that little quaver prefacing her last two words which precipitated the affair. Otherwise a question natural enough under the circumstances would have proved innocuous. But for the life of her she could not control her voice; on those simple words it broke; and so the question became confession—confession, accusation and challenge all in, one.

It created first a pause, an instant of breathless suspense, while Lyttleton stared in doubt and Sally steeled herself, with an effect of trembling, reluctant, upon the brink of some vast mystery.

Then: "To me?" he said slowly. "You mean me to understand you might lie to another-but not to me?"

Her response was little better than a gasp: "You know it!"

He acknowledged this with half a nod; he knew it well, too well.

Now she must have seemed very lovely to the man in that moment of defiance. She saw his eyes lighten with a singular flash, saw his face darken suddenly in the paling moonlight, and heard the sharp sibilance of his indrawn breath.

And whether or not it was so, she fancied the wind had fallen, that the night was hushed once more, and now more profoundly than it had ever been, as though the very world were standing still in anticipation.

She heard him cry, almost angrily: "Oh, damn it, I must not!"

And with that she was in his arms, sobbing, panting, going to heaven against his lips. . . .

Then fell a lull. She was conscious that his embrace relaxed a trifle, heard the murmur of his consternation: "Oh, this is madness, madness!"

But when she tried to release herself his arms tightened.

"No!" he said thickly, "not now—not after this. Don't. I love you!"

She braced her hands against his breast, struggled, thrust him away from her, found herself free at last.

"You don't!" she sobbed miserably; "You don't love me. Don't lie to me! Let me go!"

"Why do you say that? You love me, and I—"

"Don't say it! It isn't true! I know. I threw myself at your head. What else could you do? You care nothing about me; to you I'm just one more silly woman. No; let me be, please! You do not love me—you don't, you don't, you don't!"

He shrugged, relinquished his effort to recapture her, muttered uncertainly: "Blessed if I know!"

Recovering a little, she drew her hands swiftly across face and eyes that still burned with his kisses.

"Oh!" she cried brokenly, "why did you—why did I—?"

"What's the good of asking that? It's done now," he argued with a touch of aggrieved resentment. "I didn't mean—I meant to—I don't know what I meant. Only—never this."

He took an impatient stride or two in the shelter of the shadow, turned back to her, expostulant: "It's too bad! I'd have given worlds—"

"But now I've gone and done it!" she retorted bitterly. In chagrin, her own indignation mounted. "It is too bad, poor Mr. Lyttleton!"

That was too much; he came closer and grasped her wrist. "Why do you talk that way to me?" he demanded wrathfully. "What have I done—?"

"You? Nothing!" she broke in, roughly wrenching her hand free in a fury of humiliation. "Do you ever do anything? Isn't the woman always the aggressor? Never your fault—of course not! But don't, please, worry; I shan't ever remind you. You're quite free to go and forget what's happened as quickly as you like!"

She scrubbed the knuckles of one hand roughly across her quivering lips. "Forget!" she cried. "Oh, if only I might ever . . . But that's my penance, the mortification of remembering how I took advantage of the chivalry of a man who didn't care for me—and couldn't!"

"You don't know that," Lyttleton retorted.

Provoked to imprudence by this sudden contrariety, this strange inconsistence, he made a futile attempt to regain her hand. "Don't be foolish. Can't you see I'm crazy about you?"

"Oh, yes!" she laughed, contemptuous.

"You're no fool," he declared hotly. "You know well you can't—a woman like you—play with a man like me as if he were a child. I tell you I—"

He checked himself with a firm hand; since, it seemed, she was one who took such matters seriously. "I'm mad about you," he repeated in a more subdued tone, "and I'd give anything if . . . Only . . . the deuce of it is, I can't . . ."

"You can't afford to!" she snapped him up. "Oh, I understand you perfectly. Didn't I warn you I was penniless? You can't afford to love a penniless Nobody, can you—a shop-girl masquerading in borrowed finery! No—please don't look so incredulous; you must have guessed. Anyway, that's all I am, or was—a shop-girl out of work—before I was brought here to be Mrs. Gosnold's secretary. And that's all I'll be to-morrow, or as soon as ever she learns that I way lay her men guests at all hours and—steal their kisses!"

"She won't learn that from me," said Lyttleton, "not if you hold your tongue."

She drew back a pace, as though he had made to strike her, and for a moment was speechless, staring into the new countenance he showed her—the set, cold mask of the insolent, conquering male. And chagrin ate at her heart like an acid, so that inwardly she writhed with the pain of it.

"I—!" she breathed, incredulous. "I hold my tongue! Oh! Do you think for an instant I'm anxious to advertise my ignominy?"

"It's a bargain, then?" he suggested coolly. "For my part, I don't mind admitting I'd much rather it didn't ever become known that I, too, was—let's say—troubled with insomnia to-night. But if you say nothing, and I say nothing—why, of course—there's not much I wouldn't do for you, my dear!"

After a little she said quietly: "Of course I deserved this. But I'm glad now it turned out the way it has. Two minutes ago I was wild with the shame of making myself so cheap as to let you—of being such a fool as to dream you would lower yourself to the level of a woman not what you'd call your social equal, who could so far forget her dignity as to let you see she cared for you. But, of course, since I am not that—your peer—but only a shop-girl, I'm glad it's happened. Because now I understand some things better—you, for example. I understand you very well now—too well!"

She laughed quietly to his dashed countenance: "Oh, I'm cured, no fear!" and turned as if to leave him.

He proved, however, unexpectedly loath to let her go.

Such spirit was not altogether new in his experience, but it wasn't every day one met a girl who had it; whatever her social status, here was rare fire—or the promise of it. Nor had he undervalued her; he had suspected as much from the very first; connoisseur that he was, his flair had not deceived him.

His lips tightened, his eyes glimmered ominously.

And she was, in a way, at his mercy. If what she said of herself were true, he need only speak a word and she would be as good as thrown out. Even Abigail Gosnold couldn't protect her, insist on people inviting a shop-girl to their houses. And if such drudgery were really what she had come up from, you might be sure she'd break her heart rather than forfeit all this that she had gained.

And then again she had been all for him from the very first. She had admitted as much out of her own mouth. Her own mouth, for that matter, had taken his kisses—and hungrily, or he was no judge of kissing. Only the surprise of it, his own dumb unreadiness, his unwonted lack of ingenuity and diplomatics had almost lost her to him. Not quite, however; it was not yet too late; and though the risk was great, the penalty heavy if he were discovered pursuing an affair under this roof, the game was well worth the candle.

Thus Mr. Lyttleton to his conscience; and thus it happened that, when she turned to go, he stepped quickly to her side and said quietly: "Oh, please, my dear—one minute."

The unexpected humility of his tone, mixed with the impudence of that term of endearment, so struck her that she hesitated despite the counsel of a sound intuition.

"We mustn't part this way—misunderstanding one another," he insisted, ignoring the hostility in her attitude and modulating his voice to a tone whose potency often had been proved. "Three words can set me right with you, if you'll only listen—"

She said frostily: "Well?"

"Three words." He drew still nearer. "I've said them once to-night. Will you hear them again? No—please listen! I meant what I said, but I was carried out of myself—clumsy—bungled my meaning. You misunderstood, misconstrued, and before I could correct you I'd lost my temper. You said cruel things—just enough, no doubt, from your point of view—and you put words into my mouth, read thoughts into my mind that never were there. And I let you do me that injustice because I'm hot-tempered. And then, I'm not altogether a free agent; I'm not my own master, quite; and that's difficult to explain. If I could make you understand—"

Grown a little calmer, she couldn't deny there was something reasonable in his argument. She really had given him little chance; impulse and instinct had worked upon her, causing her to jump at conclusions which, however well founded in fact, were without excuse in act. If he had kissed her, it wasn't without provocation, nor against her will; she had got no more than she asked for. The trouble was, she no longer wanted it. She had been the dupe of her own folly, by her own romantic bent and the magnetism of the man blinded to the essentially meretricious spirit clothed in the flesh of his engaging person.

It had been a simple and perhaps inevitable infatuation of a mind all too ready to be infatuated, needing heroic treatment—such as she'd had and blushed to remember—to cure. And the shock of waking from that mad dream, no less than the shock of physical contact, had made her frantic and unreasonable. She could but admit that and, admitting it, be generous enough to let him clear himself.

If only he would not insist on his declaration of love, that she knew to be untrue, as if the compliment of it must be a balm to a spirit as bruised as her own!

He went on: "And all this because I seemed to hesitate—because I did hesitate, knowing I couldn't say all I wanted to. And before I could explain—"

"You're not married?" she inquired with an absence of emotion that should have warned him.

"Of course not. But I'm dependent, and good for nothing in a business way. My income is from my family, and depends on their favour. What can I say? I love you—I do—on my soul, I do!"

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?"

Sally was dumb.

"Was it—that man you went out there to meet—"

"I didn't go to meet anybody. It was an accident."

"So you say. Was it some one of the guests here?"

Silence was all the answer.

"If you persist in your present attitude, remembering your dubious history, I have every right to take it for granted you went to meet an accomplice in crime—"

"Oh, rot!" Sally interjected impatiently.

And then, encouraged by consciousness of her audacity, she let her temper run away with her for an instant.

"All that's no good," she declared forcibly, "and you know it. If you mean to speak to Mrs. Gosnold about me in the morning, and have me sent away merely because I've had an unpleasant experience and refuse to discuss it with you—when it's none of your affair—why, I can't stop you. But I'm not a child, to be bullied and browbeaten, and I'm certainly not going to humour your curiosity about my private business. And that's flat. Now run and tell, if you really must—but you won't."

"Oh-indeed?" Mrs. Standish rose with vast dignity. "And why won't I, if you please?"

"Because you won't dare risk that insurance money, for one thing—"

"So you think you can blackmail—"

"Call it anything you like," Sally flashed defiantly. "Only bear in mind, I'm not going to submit tamely and be sent away in disgrace, like a kitchen-maid. I'll go, right enough—you don't need to worry about that—but I'll go on my own excuse. If you tell on me, I'll tell on you, and I'll tell everything I know, too."

"And what, please," the woman purred dangerously, "do you think you know—?"

"What about your signalling that yacht just now?"

It was shot at a venture; she had no real knowledge that the lighted window had been that of Mrs. Standish's bedroom; but it was just possible, and she chanced it, and it told, though she was not yet to know that with any certainty.

"What are you talking about?" Mrs. Standish hesitated with a hand on the door-knob.

"You know well enough. I saw what I saw. People don't do things like that unless there's something secret about it, something they don't want known."

"I think you must be out of your head," the woman responded with crushing hauteur. "I haven't the slightest notion what you mean, and you needn't trouble to enlighten me. I don't in the least care. But you may sleep on this—that your insolence shall be properly rewarded as soon as I can see my aunt in the morning. Good night."

With a defiant sniff that covered a spirit cringing in consternation, Sally turned her back and threw herself angrily into a chair. But the sound that she had expected of the door closing did not come, and after a minute she looked round to find Mrs. Standish still at pause upon the threshold.

"Oh," said Sally, with an impertinent assumption of remedying an oversight, "good night, I'm sure!"

Instead of audible reply, the woman shut the door and turned back to the middle of the room.

"I don't wish to be unjust," she said quietly.

"I am quick-tempered, just as you are, but I always try to be fair in the end. Perhaps I was unpleasant and too exacting just now; but, you must admit, I really know little or nothing about you, and have every right to watch you closely."

She paused, as if expecting an answer; but before Sally could overcome her astonishment she resumed in the same level, reasonable tone:

"I was greatly distressed when I came here and found you had gone out at this hour of the night: certainly, you must allow, a queer proceeding on the part of a young woman in your position. And when you come back, after a long talk with a strange man in the shelter of a hedge, and refuse to give an account of yourself, I confess you exasperated me. At the same time, accidents do happen; and it's true you have rights of privacy that even I must respect—to whom you owe a great deal, you must admit. And now I think I've gone as far toward making amends as even you could ask."

Astonishment and incredulity yielded to penitence. Sally sat up with a little gesture of contrition and appeal—an outflung hand instantly withdrawn; this was not a woman whose susceptibilities were to be touched by such means; even now, beneath her ostensible generosity, one divined a nature cold and little placable.

Then, with a remorseful cry, "Oh, I'm sorry!" the girl yielded to the tension of overwrought nerves and broke down completely, crushed, confounded, shaken by spasms of silent sobbing.

In the course of this she was conscious of the touch of a hand on her shoulder; no more than that. And when she had spent herself in tears and grew more calm, it was to find Mrs. Standish seated opposite her and waiting patiently; at all events with a fair imitation of that virtue.

"Please," Sally begged between gulps, "please forgive me. I'm so excited and unstrung—"

"I quite understand. There—compose yourself."

"If you still wish me to—if you insist—of course I'll tell you—"

"No." It cost the other woman an effort of renunciation, but she was steadfast to her secret purpose. "Forget that. It doesn't matter. I had no right to ask, and really do not care to know. But if you're quite able to pay attention, I'd like to consult with you—about what got me out of bed and brought me here this morning."

"I don't understand."

"Of course you don't. But it has been on my nerves all evening, until I felt as if I must talk to somebody—and you are the only one I can trust."

Sally stared in a state of dumb bewilderment that eclipsed all she had experienced before. Truly the world was topsyturvy this madcap night! What under the moon now?

"You know how worried I've been about that affair in town. Men are so inconsiderate; simply because he knew how things were going—and I presumed they must have been going well—Walter left me without a word till this evening. Then he telegraphed he'd be here to-morrow afternoon and that everything was all right; but that he is bringing with him one of the adjusters for the burglar-insurance people—a detective, I presume, the man is, really—and I'll have to answer some questions before we can collect the money to cover my loss."

"A detective!"

"Adjuster is a much more pleasant name. And I know it's merely a matter of formality, and I oughtn't to be silly about it, but I can't help it. I've been on edge ever since, fretting for fear something would come out about that case that Walter did bring me from the safe, you remember. If that were found—as it might be, if they ask me to produce what jewelry I have with me—well, I simply can't think what to do."

"Why not hide the case?"

"That's just it. But where? I can't imagine. Of course I can't very well smuggle it out of the house myself. So I thought perhaps you . . . At any rate, I've brought it to you."

"To me?"

"Don't be alarmed. Nobody will ever suspect you of any connection whatever with the affair. It'll be perfectly safe here, in your keeping, until you find a way to dispose of it. To-morrow night, for instance, as soon as it's dark, you might take it down to the shore, put a stone in it, and throw it out into the water. Or bury it in the sand. Anything. Nobody will pay any attention if you excuse yourself to go to your room or out to the terrace for half an hour. But I—well, you must see. I've hidden the case under your pillow. You may find some better place for it—but then you haven't a maid to hoodwink. I declare it has nearly driven me mad, these last few days, trying to keep the thing out of Ellen's sight. She's such a nosy, prying creature."

Mrs. Standish rose. "You will do this for me, won't you? I was sure I could depend on you. And—let us forget our little misunderstanding. I've forgotten it already."

She had left the room before Sally could formulate reasonable protest—reasonable, that is, remembering her burden of obligation to this woman.

It was an hour later before she at length settled upon satisfactory concealment for the incriminating jewel-case—in the recess behind a bureau-drawer, where it fitted precisely in the wrappings she did not trouble to remove.

In the grey twilight of the dawn at last, she flung herself upon the bed—and fell instantly asleep.



CHAPTER XI

THE THIRD DEGREE

In the sequel to that night of mischief and misadventure Sarah Manvers had sound reason to be thankful for the resilient youth which still animated her body. But of course she wasn't; youth will ever misprize till it must mourn its blessings.

Yet by virtue of that inestimable attribute alone was she able to do with only four hours' sleep (when Adele Standish, for example, needed eight, and then was seedy) and be the first of the household to appear for breakfast—clear of eye and fresh of colour, with a countenance as serene as her temper and a temper as normal as her appetite.

As for this last, she made an excellent breakfast, alone in the sun-bright dining-room. And if at times, as she sat and munched, her look was pensive and remote, this was due less to misgivings than to mystification.

The quarrel and reconciliation with Mrs. Standish had cleared the atmosphere of their relations; henceforward there could be no more misunderstanding; they hated each other heartily; neither entertained any illusion as to that; but their interests were too far interdependent to license any play of private feeling. Sally wanted to stay on at Gosnold House, and Mrs. Standish was resigned; Mrs. Standish wanted her insurance money, and Sally would help her get it—by keeping quiet. Sally might be dealt with severely by the law if Mrs. Standish said the word, and Mrs. Standish, if Sally spoke, would suffer not only in her pocketbook, but in the graces of her aunt.

But Sally was not without compunction in respect to the deception practised on her still prospective employer. It wasn't possible to know Mrs. Gosnold and not like her; if that personality enforced respect, it was a lodestone for affection, and Sally meant with all her heart to serve faithfully and well; if she was to have her way, neither would know a single regret because of their association until time and chance conspired to sunder it.

Then, too, sleep had appreciably changed the complexion of her mind toward the Lyttleton episode. She was not yet able to recall that chapter of infatuation without a cringe of shame; but that would pass with time, and the experience had not been without a value already apparent. For even as she had said to him, she was cured—and more than cured, she was instructed; she was not only better acquainted with herself, but had learned to read the Lyttleton temperament too well ever to require repetition of the lesson. If she had played the fatuous moth, she had come through cheaply, with wings not even singed; for what she had taken for flame had proved to be no more than cheapest incandescence. She felt so sure of all this that she could even contemplate the affair with some inklings of the amusement that it would yet afford her. And she was fixed to make this the key of her attitude toward the man in all such future intercourse as was unavoidable.

But Trego . . .

Trego was a horse of another colour altogether. The very name of Trego was hateful in her hearing. There was little she would not willingly have done, however unjust and unfair, to avoid further communications with this animal of a Trego.

And yet, as she had learned, the term of his stay at Gosnold House had still another week to run, and he was in some way a favourite and intimate of Mrs. Gosnold, apt frequently to figure as her guest; and since this was so, and Sally herself bade fair (barring accidents) to prove a fixture in the household, it seemed inevitable that they must be often thrown together. So she must at all costs school herself to treat him civilly—at least without overt animosity.

She could imagine no task more difficult or distasteful; short of forfeiting her place in this new sphere, she would have paid almost any price for remission of that duty.

The irony of life seemed a bitter draft. Granting it had been requisite to some strange design of fate, in its inscrutable vagary, that several persons should suffer a night of broken rest at Gosnold House, why must they have been those four and none other—Sally, Adele Standish, Lyttleton, Trego? Especially Trego! Why that one? Palpable bonds of mutual interest linked the three first named; their common affliction might conceivably have been ascribable to subtle psychological affinity. But Trego was well outside the triangle, even as perceptibly out of sympathy with a majority of Mrs. Gosnold's guests.

Mrs. Standish was studious in her avoidance of him without appearance of open slight. His nature and Lyttleton's were essentially antagonistic. Sally's animus had been well defined from the very beginning, when she had resented his being both physically and temperamentally so completely out of the picture of that existence to which she aspired.

But reconnaissance up that dark alley demonstrated it an indisputable impasse and Sally gave it up, reserving the grievance for tender nursing (she had a very human weakness for selected wrongs) and turned her attention to the puzzle involving Lyttleton's business on the beach at 2 A. M. and the signals exchanged between yacht and window.

Nor did she make much headway in this quarter. Instinct indicated a delicate harmony between those events and the formless shadow to which Sally had all along been sensitive, of something equivocal in the pretensions of Mrs. Standish. But that clue played will-o'-the-wisp with her fancy, leading it ever farther astray in a bottomless bog of black bewilderment.

None the less, she had just succeeded in establishing to her own satisfaction the probability that her sponsor had been, if not active in, at least acquainted with the business of the signals—reasoning shrewdly upon that lady's high-handed treatment of Sally's insinuation as inconsequential—when Mr. Trego elected to appear for breakfast.

That unhappy young man had been more wise if he had not taken it for granted that nine o'clock would be too early for Sally as well as for everybody else who didn't make breakfast in bed a habit; and a more diplomatic person would have been at pains to prepare himself against that inevitable rencontre with a young woman of exacerbated sensibilities. Nothing could have been more surely predestined to ghastly failure than his cheerful assumption of a complete understanding, with the hint implicit that, having done Sally a signal service, he was willing to let bygones be bygones and take as tacit a sense of obligation not easy for her to express.

"Hel-lo!" he saluted the charming vision of her with undisguised pleasure and surprise. "You down already? Why, I made sure I had at least two hours' lead of the field."

"Yes," Sally agreed quietly; "I am early, I presume."

"Want to be careful," Trego cautioned; "it's hardly the thing, this early rising, you know; it's not really clawss; it isn't done."

Sally said nothing. It was safer not to. And cheerfully unaware of her self-restraint, Trego armed himself with a plate and foraged at the side-table, with its array of silver-hooded hot-water dishes.

"Been for a swim," he volunteered with a thrill of coarse creature satisfaction in his tone. "Wonderful water along this coast—not too warm, like the Jersey beaches—to my taste, anyway, and not too all-fired cold, as it generally is north of the Cape, but just right. Like bathing in champagne properly chilled. No such pick-me-up in the world as a dip in the cool of the morning. You should have tried it."

"I dare say," said Sally briefly, and was very glad she hadn't. "But that dreadfully long climb up from the beach—" she amended, feeling it obligatory upon her not to seem too short of civility.

"You don't mind that when you come to it after a swim," Trego declared. "It's only in anticipation, when you're snug between sheets and debating the rival claims of the distant beach and your handy bathtub; then, I grant you, the climb up the cliff weighs heavily in the scale of disadvantages."

He drew out the chair adjoining Sally's and attacked the half of an iced canteloup, but after the first mouthful put down his spoon.

"Sugar, please," he said with a deprecatory grimace, indicating the bowl just beyond the girl's place. "I know I ought to go in for salt if I want to come through as a regular guy; but if you won't tell on me, I'm going to enjoy this melon in my own primitive Western way. Thanks."

He committed the unpardonable deed with a liberal hand. "Frightfully weird, you know," he mimicked with a chuckle, adding: "It takes the rude, untutored mind of a barbarian to be satisfied with sweetening a thing with sweetness instead of bitterness, doesn't it'?"

"But I prefer salt myself," said the girl; "it brings out the flavour."

She concluded her defence in some confusion due to Trego's practically synchronous utterance of her identical phrase: "it brings out the flavour." Then she realised that he had deliberately trapped her and was meanly laughing in the triumph of his low cunning. And she had to laugh, too, to save her face; but it was an empty laugh and accompanied by a flush that might have warned the man had he not too soon returned attention to his melon.

"Never fails," he remarked. "Though, of course, it isn't safe to work it on anybody in this outfit—not, at least, unless you're pretty sure there's a trace of human humour in the make-up of the specimen. I'm making a collection of those stereotypes; it helps a lot. O table-talk! where is thy sting—when a fellow knows all the answers?"

He rose, set aside the shell of the maltreated melon, and returned with his plunder from the hot-water dishes, to find Sally on the point of leaving.

"Not going?" he protested more soberly. "Don't tell me I offended you, catching you up like that!"

"How absurd!" the infuriated girl replied, smiling falsely. "But—"

"Then, if you've nothing pressing on, keep me company for a little. I want to ask your advice. I'm puzzled. Maybe you can suggest something."

She couldn't well go, then, without betraying umbrage, so she settled herself with a resigned temper, and for want of a better lead contented herself with a conversational stop-gap—"Puzzled?"—spoken in an encouraging tone.

"Yes. Something I noticed this morning. But it weaves into last night—maybe. Maybe not. I'm a slow thinker when it comes to puzzles."

He filled a cup with coffee from the shining urn and resumed his chair.

"You see . . ." Some intimation of his gaucherie made him stumble. "Of course," he went on, semi-apologetic, "you understand that I'm going on the assumption that you're as human as I am."

"Thank you," said Sally sweetly.

"Human enough," he explained, "not to think I'm a savage because I've reminded you of last night."

"I see no reason—" she began with dignity.

"And there isn't any," he argued heartily. "We're both old enough to behave like grown-ups. Only, a fellow never can tell where he stands with most of these festive dames. I've been lorgnetted until I'm scared to open my mouth. But with you—well, it's like meeting somebody from home to talk to you."

"But the puzzle?" she reminded him with more patience than he knew.

"Oh, yes. I was going to say when I side-tracked myself: what got me up was Lyttleton. He has the room next mine, you know. I'd just turned out my bedside light—been reading, you understand—when I heard his door open very gently and somebody go pussy-footing down the hall. And for some reason that kept me awake—because it was none of my business, I guess—waiting for him to come back and wondering what in thunder took him out on the prowl like that. And when I had wondered myself wide awake I got up and dressed—thought I'd take a walk, too, since the night was so fine. I honestly had no idea of following him—that was all an accident, my butting in the way I did."

Sudden perception of a footing upon ground properly taboo even to angels caused the man to flush brick-red. His eyes sought Sally's in honest consternation.

"Hope you don't mind," he mumbled.

"Please go on," she said, conscious of the heat in her own cheeks, and holding him in an esteem proportionately more poisonous.

"Well. About this morning: As I say, I went down to the beach for a dip. You know how that beach is—about a twelve-foot breadth of sand from the bottom of the cliff when the tide's high, with about twenty feet more when it's low. So foot-prints show until the weather rubs them out—takes a tolerable storm, as a rule. Below high-water mark it's different; the sand is covered up and smoothed out twice a day. Well, then, just below high-water mark—that is, about five feet below it, or at quarter-tide mark—I noticed the print of a rowboat's bows on the sand. It had landed there and waited a while—drawn up only part way out of the water—about three o'clock this morning. Two men had got out; one waited with the boat, the other went up toward the foot of the steps and mixed his footprints up with all the others. I don't know what for and can't imagine; but that's what happened, and presently he turned round and went back to the boat, and the two of them shoved her off again—trusting, I guess, to the tide to cover up the signs of their landing.

"Why they should want to be secret about it, God only knows; but if they didn't, why three o'clock? It's all private beach along here, and whereas I believe there are no property rights below high-water mark, and anybody has a right to land anywhere in an emergency—where was the emergency? There was no gale last night, and if there had been, you'd think distressed mariners would have sense enough to come ashore farther along, toward the village, where they could find shelter—and all that. The more I think about it, the funnier it looks to me."

He finished his breakfast and his statement at the same time, pushed back his chair, and produced a cigarette-case.

"You don't mind? Thanks. Now what do you think?"

Sally shook her head and looked blank. "Three o'clock? How can you be so sure about that?" she inquired obliquely.

"Because it's high tide twice a day—approximately every twelve hours. I looked up a tide-table in the hall out there and found it was high at one eleven this morning and low at seven thirty-five—just about an hour turned when I had my swim, the water-line then about twelve feet short of the marks of the boat. It'll be high again about one forty-eight this afternoon—at least noon before water begins to wash over those marks."

He puffed voluminously. "If there was any shenanigan afoot last night, a couple of thick-heads footed it—that is, if they cared whether they left any clues or not."

Constrained to fill in his expectant pause, she made shift with a "How very odd!" that was a triumph of naturalness.

"Isn't it?" he agreed. "Now what do you make of it?"

"Nothing," she replied truthfully, for she was entirely at a loss to fit this new development into the adventures of Lyttleton and the lighted window—and make sense of it. "I can't imagine—"

"What I want to know is this," Trego propounded cunningly: "had Lyttleton anything to do with it?" She had prepared for that question, had settled her answer beforehand; even with any real reason to suspect Lyttleton of complicity in something underhand, she would not have betrayed him to this man—if to anybody.

"I'm sure I can't say."

"Well—it's funny, anyhow. Guess we better not say anything about it. After all, it's no concern of ours."

She couldn't refrain from the question: "But why should you think he—?"

"Well, what was he doing all that time—?"

He checked and stammered with embarrassment. "I beg your pardon!"

"You needn't. He wasn't—with me—all that time."

The situation grown intolerable, Sally got up suddenly and without a word of excuse took her scarlet cheeks out of the dining-room and back to her bedchamber.

On the dot of their standing appointment she found Mrs. Gosnold unconsciously, perhaps, but none the less strikingly posed in the golden glow of her boudoir window for the portrait of a lady of quality on fatigue duty—very much at her ease in a lavender-silk morning gown and stretched out in a chaise longue, a tray with fruit, coffee and rolls on her left dividing attention with a sheaf of morning notes on the other side and the portable writing-case on her knees.

Acknowledging Sally's appearance with a pleasant if slightly abstracted smile, she murmured: "Oh, is it you, Miss Manwaring? Sit down, please. Half a minute . . ."

On the qui vive for any indication that Mrs. Standish had been false to her word or Mrs. Gosnold informed through any other channel of the secret history of that night and consequently inclined to hold her secretary in distrust, Sally detected nothing in the other's manner to add to her uneasiness. To the contrary, in fact. She sat and watched in admiration, and thought that she had never known a woman better poised, more serenely mistress of herself and of the technique of life. If Mrs. Gosnold nursed a secret sorrow, anxiety, or grievance, the world would never learn of it through any flaw in the armour of her self-possession.

She wrought busily with a fountain pen for little longer than the stipulated period of delay, then addressed and sealed a note and looked up again with her amiable, shrewd smile.

"Good morning!" she laughed, quite as if she had not till then recognised Sally's presence. "You've slept well, I trust?"

Sally did not hesitate perceptibly; the honest impulse prevailed. Secretly she was determined to tell no more major lies, though the heavens fell—only such minor fibs as are necessary to lubricate the machinery of society. She would do her best, of course, to preserve the hateful truth that had been so cunningly covered up by the lies of Mrs. Standish's first invention; but she would do that best, if possible, more by keeping silence than by coining and uttering fresh falsehoods.

"Not so well last night," she confessed. "I don't know what was the matter with me, but somehow I didn't seem even to want to sleep."

"I know," Mrs. Gosnold nodded wisely. "I'm not yet old enough to have forgotten these midsummer moonlight nights of ours. When I was a girl and being courted, from this very house, I know I used to wait until everybody had gone to bed and creep out and wander for hours . . ."

Her pause invited confidences. And momentarily Sally's heart thumped like a trip-hammer. Did she, then, either know or guess?

"I did that last night," she responded; "but I hadn't your excuse."

"You mean, you're not being courted? Don't be impatient. Once to every woman—once too often to most. And it's well to take one's time nowadays. Perhaps it's a sign of age, and I shouldn't own it, but it does seem to me that the young men of to-day are an uncommonly godless crew. I should be sorry to have you make a mistake . . ."

She contented herself with that much warning and no more; but Sally knew their thoughts were one, focused upon a singular though by no means strange example of the young men of the present day.

"I think," her employer pursued, with a look excusing the transient keenness of her scrutiny, "our Island air agrees with you. If you have had one poor night, all the same you're quite another girl than the one who came here—was it only four days ago? I hope you're quite comfortable."

"Oh, yes, indeed."

"And would you care to stay on?"

"With all my heart!"

"I see no reason why you shouldn't. I like you very well; you're quick and willing—and you humour my weakness for the respect of my associates. I don't ask for their dependence. If you like, we'll say your engagement begins to-day, the first of the week."

"You are very kind."

"I'm very selfish. I like intelligence, prettiness, and youth—must have them at any cost! So that's understood. Of course, there are certain questions to be settled, arrangements to be made. For example, I assume responsibility for your losses at bridge, because playing when I wish you to is one of your duties. But these matters adjust themselves as they come up from time to time."

"Thank you," said Sally in a tone that, though little more than a whisper, was more eloquent of her gratitude than the mere phrase could possibly have been.

"So now I shall stop calling you Miss Manwaring."

"Please do."

"It's much too formal, considering I'm old enough to be your mother."

"Oh, no!" Sally protested involuntarily. "That isn't possible."

"I'll not see fifty-five again," Mrs. Gosnold announced. "But that's a boudoir secret."

"I'll never—"

"And a secret of Polichinelle besides," the other laughed; "everybody I know or care a snap for knows it. At the same time, no woman cares to have her age discussed, even if it is public property and she quite old enough to be beyond such vanity. No matter; I'm going to call you Sara, if you've no objection."

"Why not Sally?" the girl suggested tentatively. "That's my name—I mean, what I'm accustomed to."

"Thank you; I like it even better," Mrs. Gosnold affirmed. "I'm conservative enough to favour old-time names. My own, for instance, Abigail, pleases me immensely, though I seldom meet a young woman these days who can hear it without looking either incredulous or as though she doubted the sanity of my sponsors in baptism."

She stayed the obvious reply with an indulgent toss of a hand still fair.

"Now to work. I've mapped out a busy morning for you. To begin with, here are a dozen or so notes to deliver. You may take the dog-cart—no, to save time, one of the motors. We must give these good people as much time as possible, considering it's a spur-of-the-moment affair. That is why, you understand, there are so few invitations—because I'd no time to write and post a number. But each of these is a bid to some friend with a houseful of people to come and bring all her guests.

"Oh!" she laughed, catching the look of puzzlement on the girl's face, "I haven't told you what it is. Well, my dear, it's an old woman's whim. Every so often I break loose this way and keep my memory green as one who, in her day, never entertained but in some unique fashion. I was once famous for that sort of thing, but of late years I haven't exerted myself except when bored to extinction by the deadly commonplace amusements most people offer us.

"For some time I've had this in mind, and everything prepared; you may, if you like, call it a spontaneous masquerade by moonlight. Half the fun of such affairs comes of the last-moment, makeshift costumes; if you give people much time to think them up it is always a stiff and frigid function. Moreover, it demands a perfect night—and we can't count on our Island weather twenty-four hours in advance. But to-day is perfect, and to-night will be fair with the moon at its full. You may dance on the veranda or make love on the terrace, just as you please, from ten o'clock till three—or later. Supper will be served from midnight on. At one we shall unmask.

"As I say, all preparations had been made, weather permitting; I had merely to telephone the caterers, electricians, and musicians, and scribble these invitations. I'd advise you to arrange your day to include a good long nap before dinner, for you'll be up till all hours very likely. I fancy I can promise you some fun."

Mrs. Gosnold ceased upon a note of mischievous enjoyment in anticipation that would have suited a girl of sixteen, then analysed the trouble behind Sally's perturbed countenance.

"As for your costume, you're not to give it a thought! I have arranged for it to be brought to your room at half past nine, and I pledge you my word you'll find it becoming. I have only two requests to make of you: that you refrain from unmasking or admitting your identity until one o'clock, and that if you recognise me, you hold your tongue. Is it a bargain?"

"You're so good to me," said Sally simply, "I can't think how to thank you."

"Leave that, too, to me. It's quite possible I may suggest a way." Mrs. Gosnold smiled curiously as at a thought reserved. "Now run along—order the car and put on your prettiest hat. But a moment!"

She illustrated the process of taking thought by puckering her brows and clipping her chin between a thumb and forefinger.

"Let me see. Have I remembered everybody?" She conned, half aloud, a list of names. "But no! What an oversight! I should never have forgiven myself—or have been forgiven. And my fountain pen needs refilling. No"—as Sally offered to take the pen—"sit there at the desk and write at my dictation. I will sign it."

Obediently Sally took her place at the escritoire, arranged a sheet of the monogrammed note-paper used by Mrs. Gosnold for correspondence with personal friends (as distinguished from the formal letter-head of Gosnold House, with its bristling array of telephone numbers and telegraph, post-office, railroad and steamboat addresses), dipped a pen, and waited with a mind preoccupied by visions of the night to come. Her first ball! Her first real function in Society!

"My dear friend," Mrs. Gosnold enunciated deliberately in a colourless, placid voice. "(Colon, dash, paragraph) It was only late last night, and then by merest chance, I learned you had come to the island yesterday instead of sailing last week, in accordance with your announced intention (period). So I cannot decently begin by berating you (dash) as I should, had you been here twenty-four hours without personally letting me know (period)."

A pause. Sally dreamed a beautiful dream of a crinoline costume, beflowered and beflounced, such as Vogue had lately pictured as a forecast of autumn fashions, an iridescent bubble of a dream shattered by the query: "Where was I, please?"

"'Letting me know,'" she quoted absently.

"Oh, yes. (Paragraph.) I hope with all my heart your change of plans was not brought about by any untoward accident (semicolon); but Italy's loss is the island's gain (semicolon); and I am looking forward with the keenest pleasure to seeing you again (period, paragraph). May I hope that it will be not later than to-night (point of interrogation)? I have arranged an impromptu masquerade by moonlight on the terrace (period). It should be a pretty sight (period). From ten o'clock till any time you like (dash) masks until one (period). Do come and help make the evening a happy one for me (period)."

Another contemplative pause. But this time Sally did not dream. She sat quite still in speculative wonder, troubled with a vague alarm as disturbing as the sound of distant thunder in the evening, of an August day.

"Cue, please?"

The girl replied in a low tone: "'Evening a happy one'—"

"Yes. Add: affectionately yours—or wait! Have you written—?"

"'Affectionately yours'—yes."

"No matter; leave a space for my signature, and add this: P. S. You will be glad to see, no doubt, that your letter to Adele has borne fruit (period). Miss Manwaring does splendidly as an amanuensis (period). Your judgment was always trustworthy (period). And address the envelope, of course, to Mrs. Cornwallis English. She is stopping, I hear, with the Lorimers at Bleak House—the grey stone house on the hill at the end of West Harbor Drive."

After a time Mrs. Gosnold said almost sharply: "Well, Miss Manwaring! You have little time to waste. Bring me the note, please, and a pen."

With a gesture of despair the girl twisted in her chair and showed the woman a stricken face.

"Are you sure—?" she stammered.

"Yes?" Mrs. Gosnold prompted with an accent of surprise. "What is it, Sally?"

The girl gulped hard, and mechanically put a hand to her throat, rising as she spoke.

"Are you sure Mrs. English is on the Island?"

"What of it? Why, I presumed you would be glad of the opportunity to thank her for that letter of—"

"There was no letter!"

"I beg pardon?" Mrs. Gosnold opened wide her eyes.

"I say," Sally faltered, yet with determination, "there was no letter. Mrs. Standish—that is—we both lied to you. I don't know Mrs. English; I never spoke a word to her in all my life. I didn't take any letter to Mrs. Standish. That was a story manufactured out of whole cloth to account for me—get me this position here."

"Oh, yes," Mrs. Gosnold assented coolly. "I felt quite sure of that in the beginning. You never could believe a word Adele said from the time she was able to talk. Even if the truth would have served as well and with less trouble, she was sure to disfigure it beyond identification. And Walter's just as bad. But you, my dear, will never make a good liar; the first words we spoke together I saw your eyes wince, and knew you were tormented by something on your conscience. Moreover, the last person Edna English would send anyone with a letter of recommendation to is my niece, who has not yet been proved guilty of one unselfish act. So I thought I'd test the story. Now you may tear up that note—Mrs. English is in Italy this very day, to the best of my belief—and tell me what it's all about."



CHAPTER XII

MACHIAVELLIAN

Within the span of an exceedingly bad quarter of an hour for Sally the cat was completely out of the bag, the fat as irretrievably in the fire; Sally was out of breath and in tears of penitence and despair; Mrs. Gosnold was out of her chair, thoughtfully pacing to and fro, and in full possession of all facts materially bearing upon the translation of S. Manvers of the Hardware Notions into S. Manwaring of the Golden Destiny.

No vital detail had escaped her penetrating probe; she proved herself past mistress in the art of cross-examination, and found in Sally a willing witness.

For the latter, however, it had seemed less giving of testimony than a hysteric confessional. She had wrung her conscience dry, deriving from the act a sort of awful joy mitigated by the one regret: that she had not more to confess, that the mystery of her favouring must remain a mystery which, with all the good-will in the world, no word of hers could elucidate.

As for the secret history of last night's dark transactions, however, that was not altogether hers to disclose. The interests and affairs of others were involved, she dared not guess how disastrously; she was only sensitive to the feeling that something black and foul and hideous skulked behind that shut door. Heaven forfend that hers should be the hand to open it and let ruin loose upon this pleasant world of Gosnold House!

It seemed incumbent upon her to explain that Mrs. Standish had brought to her room a jewel-case for Sally to hide or otherwise dispose of. Beyond this she feared to go. She would not mention Lyttleton or Trego or the yacht, or the window of the signals.

In the end, stopping tears and sobs as best she might, she waited listlessly her sentence of expulsion. Now nothing mattered; if her heart was lighter, her future was darker; and presently the nobody that she was would return into that drab nowhere whence some ill wind of chance had wafted her.

"Don't be a fool!" Mrs. Gosnold counselled her abruptly with unwonted brusqueness. "Do you really think I'm capable of baiting a trap for you with fair words and flattery for the sheer, inhuman pleasure of seeing you suffer until I choose to set you adrift? See how you've upset me already; metaphor is never safe in a woman's hands, but I'm seldom as bad as all that!"

Sally sniffed abjectly. "I'm willing to do anything . . ."

"You've done enough. Be content. If it were not for you and what you've been able to tell me, I'd . . . Well, no matter; I don't know what I'd do. As it is . . . Look here!"

She paused in front of Sally, dropped one hand kindly on the girl's shoulder, with the other lifted her chin, exploring her tear-wet eyes with a gaze at once charitable and discriminating.

"I've taken a fancy to you, if you are a bit of an idiot. And I believe implicitly every word you've uttered. Perhaps I oughtn't to, and I probably wouldn't, if your account of yourself didn't chime so exactly with what I know about my dutiful niece and nephew. But, you see, I do know them, and very well—and that they're quite capable of all you say, and more to boot. Adele Standish in especial I know far too well to believe for an instant she'd burden herself with benevolent intentions toward another woman without expecting to reap some wildly inadequate reward. That's all that bothers me. I can't understand what they wanted with you. But I'm not going to let my mystification lose me the services of a promising amanuensis—not in these days, when intelligence is scarce and far to seek."

"Do you mean I'm to stay?" Sally gasped incredulously.

"Most assuredly I mean you're to stay. Why not? You're modest and well-mannered, and you've got too much sense to try again to pull wool over my eyes, even if you're wicked enough to want to, which I don't believe. No; as far as you're concerned, your position here is far more firmly established now than an hour ago, when everything was against my liking you—in spite of the fact that I did—especially your loyalty to those hopeless ingrates!"

She fumed in silence for a moment. "I could have forgiven almost anything—but this! The insolence of it! To dare picture me to you—or anybody—as a silly old fool of a woman without the wit to protect herself from being fleeced by a gang of adventurers. My friends!" she broke off with a snort of superindignation. "My guests here a set of rogues and vagabonds—and worse!"

She flopped into her chair with a helpless "Oh dear!" and began to laugh.

"It's too ridiculous!" she exclaimed. "If it ever got out, I'd almost be ashamed to show my face in public again. Promise you'll never breathe a syllable—"

"Oh, I promise—I do promise!" Sally protested fervently. "But, Mrs. Gosnold . . ."

"Well, what now?"

"I suppose," said Sally, "the only way to show my gratitude is by serving you faithfully—"

"You might," the elder woman interposed in a quizzical turn, "spare me, if you can, a little affection, since it seems I've lost that of my sister's children, together with their respect."

"I don't think you'll ever complain for want of that," Sally told her very seriously. "But can you afford to run the risk of the police coming here to find Sarah Manvers, who disappeared last week after breaking into a house—burglarising it—leaving her discarded clothing behind her for one positive clue—"

"You must make your mind easy as to that; unless I'm vastly mistaken, no police will ever look for you in Gosnold House; if any did, they wouldn't be admitted; and if by any chance they did happen to get in, they wouldn't find Sarah Manvers. Please understand, you're to remain Sara Manwaring for some time to come—for good, if I think best. Don't imagine I'm going to permit you to resume your right name and spoil everything. I hope I make myself clear."

"Oh, yes, Mrs. Gosnold!"

"And—attend to me—you're not to give Adele—or Walter, either, when he gets here, any reason to suspect you've confided in me. I wish everything to go on precisely as it has been going—so far as they can see. Avoid them as much as possible; when it isn't possible, give them a dose of their own medicine if necessary—I mean, lie. There's an explosion coming, but I don't wish it to happen until I'm sure who and what are going to be blown sky-high, and I am quite prepared to stand by and enjoy the fireworks. Meantime, don't let anybody frighten you; no matter how serious matters may seem or be represented to you, rely implicitly on me. And whatever is said to you that seems of any consequence—or if you should see anything—find some way to report quickly to me. Now what did you say you did with that jewel-case Adele gave you?"

Sally repeated her account of its hiding-place.

"You didn't unwrap it, you say. Well and good!" Mrs. Gosnold nodded intently. "Then don't; leave it as it is, and some time to-day, if I can manage without being observed, I'll drop into your room and have a look at the box myself. But you are on no consideration whatever to touch it until I give you leave."

"I understand."

"If Adele and Walter want to know what you've done with it, tell them the truth—you've done nothing. Say you've not yet found a good chance to. Tell them where it is, but assure them it's perfectly safe there."

"Yes, Mrs. Gosnold."

Momentarily the older woman was lost in a reverie of semimalicious cast, to judge by the smile that faintly shadowed the firm lines of her handsome face.

"A surprise patty . . ." she observed obscurely.

Of a sudden, with a sort of snap, she roused herself back to more immediate issues. "Oh, come! the morning almost gone already and nothing accomplished! Off with you! But before you go, do, for goodness' sake, attend to your eyes; if some one were to see you going through the halls the way you are—it might be ruinous. Bathe them with cold water in the bath-room there—and you'll find plenty of powder and stuff on my dressing-table."

And while Sally hastened to profit by this advice, the other pursued: "You should school yourself never to cry, my girl. You're too sensitive and emotional by half. If you go on this way, at the least excuse—great Heavens! what a moist married life you'll lead! Now let me look at you. That's much better. You'll do very well—if only you've wit enough not to worry—to trust me, whatever the emergency. Now, please, get about my errands. And when you come back, tell Thomas to let me know. If I need you during the day I'll send for you."

As it happened, she didn't send for Sally before nightfall; but she kept her busy with commissions delivered by word of mouth—so busy, perhaps considerately, that the girl found little time to waste in futile fretting, but was ever conscious, when now and again her thoughts did inevitably revert to the status of her personal affairs, of contentment crooning in her heart like the soft refrain of some sweet old song.

Her social education had made a gigantic forward stride with her surprising discovery that confession is good for the soul, that honesty in all things is not only expedient but wholesome. If material advantage had accrued unto her through that act of desperate honesty, if she basked all this day long in the assurance of immunity from the consequences of her folly and imprudence, it was less with the arrogance of Fortune's favourite daughter than with the humility of one to whom life had measured out benefactions of which she was consciously undeserving. The assertion that the world owed her a living was forgotten, and if recalled, would have been revised to the sense that she owed the world the duty of honourable and conscientious living. If her temper was tolerably exalted, it was well chastened to boot.

Thanks to the tardy advertisement of the fete, the avidity of a people ever seeking some new thing, and the fame of Abigail Gosnold as an entertainer of eccentric genius, that day could hardly be said to wane; rather, it waxed to its close in an atmosphere of electric excitement steadily cumulative. The colony droned like some huge dynamo with the rumour of secret preparation against the night. Other than servants scurrying to and fro on pressing but mysterious errands, few folk were visible in the afternoon; the drives and beaches; the lawns, terraces, courts, gardens, verandas and casinos were one and all deserted.

At Gosnold House, below-stairs, in kitchens and servants' halls, and all about the grounds as well, a multitude of work-people swarmed like an invading army of ants. Astonishing feats of preparation were consummated as if by legerdemain. And though the routine of the household proceeded marvellously without apparent hitch or friction, luncheon and dinner degenerated into affairs of emptiest formality. At the latter, indeed, Mrs. Gosnold presided over an oddly balanced board; three-fourths of those present were men—fully half the feminine guests dining from trays in their rooms or else abstaining altogether in order that not one precious moment might be lost to the creation of their improvised disguises. And the talk at table was singularly disconnected, with an average of interest uncommonly low. People were obviously saving themselves up. There was no lingering over tobacco; the last course served, the guests dispersed in all haste compatible with decency.

It was at this meal that Sally got her first glimpse of Savage since his arrival in the course of the afternoon. She had been far too busy to keep watch and unable to invent any plausible excuse for inquiring after him, but the thought of his return had never been far out of mind. However busy, she had been unable to dismiss entirely the consideration that Savage was bringing the first authentic news of whatever activities the police might have inaugurated in connection with the burglary and whatever their progress in pursuit of the clue furnished by the garments discarded in the bath-room. And all the reassurances of Mrs. Gosnold were impotent to counteract apprehensions fostered by such reflections.

But there was the length and the width of the table between them. She had to be content with all that Savage found chance to accord her—a bow, a smile, and a glance down his nose significant of unspeakable intelligence.

She thought he looked a bit pale and worried and betrayed more nervousness than was natural in the man as she had come to know him.

Whether or not he had been accompanied by the threatened insurance adjuster (or detective!) she was unable to surmise; notwithstanding several strange faces in the number at table, she was inclined to believe that a person of such character would have been lodged somewhere in the village which served as the island's main port of entry, rather than brought to Gosnold House—already crowded with guests.

As soon as the company rose Savage manoeuvred to the side of the girl, detaining her long enough to convey a surreptitious message under cover of apparently care-free greetings.

"Must have a talk," he muttered out of the corner of his mouth. "Something you ought to know immediately."

A pang of pure fear shot through her mind, but she retained sufficient command of herself not to betray her emotion or even to seem anxious to make the appointment.

"Oh, there's no chance for that now," she evaded as per instructions, and with so successful a semblance of indifference that Savage was openly and profoundly perplexed. "I've heaps of things yet to do for Mrs. Gosnold—I'm really frightfully pushed for time even to dress."

"Yes—of course. But this talk has got to happen some time soon. However, it ought to be easy enough under our masks. What costume will you be wearing?"

"I don't know. Mrs. Gosnold promised to find something and send it to my room. I presume she must have forgotten—but perhaps it's there now."

"Well, keep an eye bright for me, then. I'll be Harlequin—an old costume I happened by sheer luck to have left here some years ago. Otherwise, I guess, I'd have to wrap up in a sheet and act like a dead one."

She laughed mechanically, murmured "I must fly!" and forthwith dashed up the great staircase and to her room.

Her costume had not yet been delivered; she had still to wait half an hour by the clock; but there was plenty of detail wherewith to occupy her time. On the other hand, the routine of one's toilet is a famous incentive to thoughtfulness, and as she went automatically through the motions of beautifying herself and dressing her hair, Sally's mind took advantage of this, its first real freedom of the day, and focused sharply on her own concerns.

It reminded her, among other things, of the fact that she had not seen Lyttleton since an adventitious glimpse of him going in to breakfast just as she was leaving the house to deliver the invitations.

She wondered idly about him, in an odd humour of tolerant superiority, as one might contemplate the presumption of an ill-bred child. And she wondered dumbly at herself, whom she found able to imagine without flinching an encounter with him of the mildly flirtatious description licensed by the masquerade. Would he know instinctively who she was and avoid her? Or have the impudence to renew his advances? Or would he fail to fathom her identity and so lay himself open to her castigation?

She did not for an instant forget that she was endued, not only by personal right as an injured woman herself at fault, but also by the authority of Mrs. Gosnold, with letters of marque and reprisal.

That she would penetrate at sight his disguise, whatever its character, she hadn't the faintest doubt.

But, then, woman's faith in her vaunted if vaguely comprehended faculty of intuition is a beautiful thing and a joy to her forever.

And she wondered what Savage would have to say to her. But in this phase her thoughts wore a complexion of far less self-assurance, notwithstanding the moral support of her employer. What could have happened in New York that he must seek an early meeting to discuss it with her? What had been the outcome of that terribly incriminating clue, her name on the garments composing that sloughed chrysalis of yesterday? Was it possible that her comrades of the studio (Heavens! how historically remote and almost unreal seemed that well-hated chapter of existence) had become anxious enough to notify the police of her long absence? In such cases, she believed, something called a general alarm was issued—a description of the absentee was read to every member of the metropolitan police force, that it might be on the alert to apprehend or succour the lost, strayed or stolen. Could that possibly have been done in the case of missing Sally Manvers? And, if so, could the police detectives possibly have overlooked the fact that the name of the wanting woman was identical with the name of the woman wanted?

For all the strength of her tower of refuge Sally shivered.

And she realised with a twinge of sincere regret that she would never dare return and share these happier fortunes with those two unhappy partners of her days of suffering and privation.

She wasn't heartless; she had thought frequently of them before, but always with the notion that she would some day, and by happy chance some day not distant, reveal her transfigured self to them and, out of the plenitude of her blessings, lend them a little, and much more than a little, aid and comfort. Something of that sort, indeed, was the least she could do; it was but justice; it was simply repayment of acknowledged indebtedness. And now, it seemed, it might never be!

From this she passed into new wonder and bewilderment at the duplicity of Savage and his sister, and the mystery of their motives and the still deeper mystery of their actions, and the inscrutable mystery of the boat that had landed on the beach of Gosnold House at three o'clock in the morning.

All of which led her suddenly to make sure of the jewel-box.

It was no longer in its place of concealment.

Mrs. Gosnold, she assumed, must have removed it.

But for what purpose? To what end?

A knock on the door announced the arrival of her costume by the hands of Mrs. Gosnold's personal maid.

"And Mrs. Gosnold says please will you come to her boudoir, miss, directly you're dressed?"

"Tell her I'll be there in fifteen minutes."

Moderate disappointment waited upon recognition of the character of her assigned disguise. She had had visions of something very splendid, something almost barbaric in its richness—had nursed a day-dream of herself flaunting radiantly through the chiaroscuro of the moonlight fete like some great jewelled butterfly.

After that vision the modest garb of a Quaker maid seemed something of a come-down, even though the costumer's conception of a Quakeress had been considerably influenced by musical comedy standards.

But her disappointment was fugitive. After all, the dress was of exquisite quality and finish, and it became her wondrous well. She took from the room the memory of a very fetching figure in a gown of dove-grey crepe-de-chine, the bosom crossed by glistening bands of white, the skirt relieved by a little apron of lace and linen, white bands at wrist and throat, a close-fitting cap of lace covering her hair, her feet and ankles disclosed discreetly in stockings of dove-grey silk and suede slippers of the same neutral shade set off by silver buckles—the whole rendered the more tempting by an almost jaunty cloak of grey satin lined with white.

With the addition of the mask (which she wore to pass through the corridor in memory of Mrs. Gosnold's injunction) the effect was quite positively fascinating.

And that mask proved to be far from superfluous, for when she followed her knock into the boudoir of her mistress she was thunderstruck to find nearly two dozen people, men and women, gathered together there, sitting and standing about in a silence which seemed curiously constrained, taken in connection with their festival attire. For they were all in costume and, with the single exception of Mrs. Gosnold, all masked.

This last was very brilliant in the billowy silken skirts, puffed sleeves, tight bodice, and wide ruff of Queen Elizabeth, and carried off well the character of that hot-tempered majesty, making no effort to disguise the fact that she was deeply wounded and profoundly agitated.

She sat regally enthroned upon a spindle-shank chair that matched her escritoire, and betrayed her impatient humour by the quick tapping of one exquisitely shod foot. And the others seemed to wait upon her pleasure in a silence almost of subjugation—a nervous, unnatural, ominous hush.

It was broken on Sally's entrance by the mistress of Gosnold House, who nodded without a sign of recognition and said in a bleak manner thus far in Sally's experience wholly foreign to the nature of the speaker: "Come in, please, shut the door, and find some place to sit down. Retain your mask. There are two guests wanting, and we must wait for them."

There were no chairs vacant, and a majority of the men were already standing, but another (by whose unquestionably authentic cowboy costume Sally was sure she recognised Trego) rose and silently surrendered to her his place.

She accepted it with a stifled murmur of thanks.

The slight stir occasioned by her addition to the company subsided, and the sense of constraint became even more marked. Nobody appeared to care to know his neighbour; there was no whispering, no murmuring, even the indispensable fidgeting was accomplished in an apprehensive and apologetic manner. A few men breathed audibly, a few fans stirred imperceptibly an atmosphere supercharged with radiations from so many human bodies added to the natural heat of a summer's evening; there were no other sounds or movements of any consequence. Sally became uncomfortably susceptible to the undercurrent of high nervous tension, conscious of a slight dew on her hands and forehead, and surprisingly conscious of the sonorous thumping of her heart. Unaccountably, nobody else seemed to hear it.

Perhaps they were all listening to their own hearts. But why . . .?

She wasted a few moments vainly scrutinising the masks in her immediate neighbourhood. Their eyes gleamed uncannily through the slits in the black silk, and when she intercepted a direct glance, it was hastily lowered or averted, as if there were something indecorous in acknowledging her bewildered appeal.

Again, perhaps, they were as much puzzled by her incognito as she was by theirs.

Those small shapes of black, silk-covered cardboard proved singularly effective, even when they concealed no more than the nose and the cheeks immediately beneath the eyes. She found it surprisingly difficult to fix an identification, even when satisfied she could not be in error; but she was measurably sure of Mrs. Artemas beneath Diana's Grecian draperies, of Trego in his Western guise, of Mercedes Pride in the conventional make-up of a witch. The rest at once provoked and eluded conjecture; she fancied she knew Lyttleton in the doublet and hose of Sir Francis Drake, but could not feel certain; divested of his peculiarly well-tailored personality, he was astonishingly like half a dozen other men among the guests.

Presently Mrs. Gosnold's maid, Marie, appeared in the doorway to the bedroom, holding in her hand a number of envelopes, and at a nod from her mistress began to thread the gathering, presenting one envelope to each guest, together with a small pencil such as is commonly attached to dance-programs.

The incident provided a grateful interruption to a situation that was rapidly assuming in Sally's esteem the grotesqueness of a dream. Remembering that this was Gosnold House, the focal point of America's most self-sufficient summer colony, and that all these subdued and inarticulate masqueraders were personages daily exploited by the press as the brightest stars in the social firmament, the incongruity of this dumb gathering seemed as glaring, as bizarre as anything her fancy could conceive.

And when her envelope was handed her and she had lifted the flap and withdrawn an oblong correspondence-card bearing the monogram A-G and nothing else, the final effect of meaningless mystery seemed to have been consummated.

But this, as it happened, was coincident with the arrival of the last two guests—one of whom was a lithe and shapely Harlequin in party-coloured tights, and the other a bewitchingly blond Columbine— and then the purpose of the meeting was soon exposed.

With no more expression than she had employed in the case of Sally, Mrs. Gosnold saluted the last comers with a request to enter and be seated, then directed her maid to go out into the hall, close the door, and stand guard to prevent eavesdropping. When the door was closed she plunged directly into a prepared address.

"I owe every one an apology," she began with a fugitive, placating smile, "for all this inconvenience and nonsense—as it must seem. But I'm sure you will bear with me when you know the circumstances, which are extraordinary, and my motive, quite a natural one.

"We are now," she pursued with a swift glance that embraced the room, "just twenty-three, including myself; that is to say, everybody who slept here last night, and one or two more. And your masks are a sure screen for any betrayal of emotion when I tell you why I have asked you to oblige me by meeting here. So please retain them whatever happens."

She paused, made a little gesture of deprecation.

"I would rather almost anything than be obliged to say what I must.

"One of us," she announced deliberately, "is a thief. These rooms were entered some time last night, while I was asleep, and all my personal jewelry was stolen. Please no one interrupt. I will answer all the natural questions before I finish.

"The robbery was not difficult to accomplish."

"The Island is well-policed, there has not been a burglary in its history, and I am a careless old woman. When I take my things off at night I leave them on my dressing-table. Marie, my maid, puts them away in the morning. I have three large jewel-cases, none of which is ever locked except when I travel. I have never had a safe. The jewel-cases are stored away in unlocked dresser-drawers. My bedroom and boudoir doors are never locked. And I am a sound sleeper. There is—and was—nothing to prevent the thief from entering after I had turned out my light and, employing ordinary discretion, helping him or her self. Which is precisely what happened last night. Every piece of jewelry was taken from my dressing-table, and the three jewel-cases from their drawers."

"I discovered my loss promptly after waking up this morning. I said nothing, but after setting in motion the machinery for to-night's amusement, which I have long had in mind, devoted the day to a quiet investigation, as a result of which I am convinced that the house servants had no part in the robbery. In short, I am persuaded that the thief is now in this room. I do not, however, wish to know his or her identity. And I am especially anxious to avoid the scandal which must follow if this affair leaks out."

"Finally, I feel so sure you all share my horror of publicity and my aversion to knowing positively who committed this crime that I ask you all silently to pledge yourselves to secrecy—and then to humour my plan for regaining my jewels and covering up the affair completely. I have thought it might be accomplished this way:"

"Marie has given you each a card, an envelope, and a pencil. The cards and envelopes have no distinguishing marks. The pencils are all alike. The authorship of anything you may care to communicate cannot possibly be traced, if you will be careful not to write but to print."

"Please take the cards away with you to your rooms, and please each of you remain there at least five minutes before coming out. Then take the cards in the envelopes, sealed, down-stairs and deposit them in the mail-box. It will not be unlocked until one o'clock. By that time I shall expect the thief to have deposited my jewelry in some hiding-place about the house or grounds—a dozen will suggest themselves on a moment's thought—the spot to be indicated on the card. By this method ample time is granted in which to make restitution with complete immunity from recognition, the secret will be kept, the scandal hushed up, and, best of all, I shall be able to continue considering each and every one of you my very dear friend."

"But"—and her handsome old face darkened with the shadow of the determination that rang in her tone—"if this scheme should fail, and the thief refuse to make restitution, then, though it break my heart, I shall feel without alternative other than to take certain steps—steps which I cannot now contemplate without positive loathing, so repugnant are they to me. . . ."

"Now I have finished," Mrs. Gosnold said quietly. "I am sorry to have imposed in this way upon your patience, but it seemed, I think you'll grant me, warranted and necessary. I thank you, and hope you'll forgive me. And now will you please return to your rooms, without asking me any questions, and do as I have begged? And I sincerely hope that this wretched business may not interfere with your enjoyment to-night. For my part, I am so confident of the success of this scheme that I mean to consider that I have not been robbed—that everything is as it has always been, and as it will be after the envelopes are opened at one o'clock."

She ceased; there was the stir of a general rising and movement toward the door, amid a hum of excited murmurings.



CHAPTER XIII

MARPLOT

Once sheltered by the privacy of her bedchamber and seated before the little white-enamel desk with its chintz-covered fittings that suited so well the simple, cheerful scheme of decoration, the girl lingered long, an idle pencil caught between fingers infirm of purpose. Her gaze was fixed as if hypnotised to the blank white face of the bit of cardboard that lay before her on the blotting-pad, her thoughts far astray in a dark jungle of horror, doubts, suspicions, fears.

Immediately after shutting herself in she had gone straight to this desk, possessed by the notion that there was a message requiring to be written upon the card, one self-exculpatory sentence which had framed itself in her mind as she sped down the corridor from that remarkable meeting in Mrs. Gosnold's rooms.

"I have not told you everything—but I am innocent," thus ran the words which she felt were demanded of her and a legitimate privilege, her duty to herself in sheer self-preservation. And as they wrote themselves down before her mental vision she saw two heavy strokes of the pen underlining "everything," and her own true name, Sarah Manvers, following in the place of the signature—no more "Sara Manwaring," Mrs. Gosnold's explicit commands to the contrary notwithstanding.

But that had been an impulse, only natural in the first shock of horror inevitably attending the disclosure of the robbery, to clear herself; or, rather, to reaffirm her innocence.

For with second thought had come the consideration: Was she not already cleared, was her innocence not already established?

She was prepared to believe that Mrs. Gosnold knew everything. That extraordinary woman! What had she not known, indeed? Mark how cunningly she had drawn from Sally the admission that she had been up and about the house and grounds long after she had gone to her bedchamber for the night—at the very time, most probably, when the robbery was being done! And that had been by way of preface to the pledge she had made Sally of her protection before startling confession from the girl—a pledge not only given in advance, but by implication at least renewed when the truth was out.

If she had believed Sally guilty, or party to the crime, or even in possession of guilty knowledge of it, would she have made that generous promise?

She was kind of heart, was Mrs. Gosnold, but she was nobody's fool; if she had not been well satisfied in her own mind as to the thief she would never have so committed herself to Sally, for she was no one to give her word lightly or, as she herself had said, to bait a trap with fair words and flattery.

In vain Sally searched her memory for anything to warrant an assumption that her mistress had been in any way ignorant of that black business of the small hours. She had neither denied such knowledge nor asserted it, but had simply permitted Sally to leave out of her account all reference to the overnight adventure.

And all that assorted consistently with her statement that she did not wish to learn the thief's identity, as well as with her invention of a means for obtaining restitution without such intelligence.

So Sally ended by believing it rather more than possible that Mrs. Gosnold knew as well as the girl herself who had consummated the crime—or, at all events, shared the damning suspicions engendered in Sally's mind by circumstantial evidence.

Lyttleton, of course: Sally entertained but the slenderest doubts of his black guilt.

If innocent, what had he been carrying hidden in the hollow of his arm? What had he left down there on the beach? Why had he left it there? Why such anxiety to escape observation as to make the man alert to notice Sally's head peering over the parapet of the landing at the head of the cliff? And if he had been employed in no way to be ashamed of, and had no consequences to fear, why that roundabout way up the cliff again and that ambush of his watcher?

And why those signals between window and yacht, if not to apprise the latter that something had been consummated, that the coast was clear for its tender to come in and take away the plunder?

It would seem, then, that Mr. Lyttleton must have had a confederate in the house, and for that role Mrs. Standish was plainly designated. An understanding of some close sort between her and Lyttleton had been quite evident from the very first day. And whose bedchamber window had shown the signals, if not hers? Not the pretty young widow's—not in any likelihood Mrs. Artemas'. To believe the latter intimate with the affair was to assume an understanding between her and Lyttleton—or else Trego.