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.