do as I ask you
to?"

"Do you mean to say," inquired Harlan, wickedly, in exact imitation of her
manner, "that you won't do as I ask you to? Four weeks ago yesterday, if I
remember rightly, you promised to obey me!"

"Don't remind me of what I'm ashamed of!" flashed Dorothy. "If I'd known
what a brute you were, I'd never have married you! You may be sure of
that!"

Claudius Tiberius insinuated himself between Harlan's feet and rubbed
against his trousers, leaving a thin film of black fur in his wake. Being
fastidious about his personal appearance, Harlan kicked Claudius Tiberius
vigorously, grabbed his hat and went out, slamming the door, and whistling
with an exaggerated cheerfulness.

"Brute!" The word rankled deeply as he went downhill with his hands in his
pockets, whistling determinedly. So Dorothy was sorry she had married him!
After all he'd done for her, too. Giving up a good position in New York,
taking her half-way around the world on a honeymoon, and bringing her to a
magnificent country residence in a fashionable locality for the Summer!

Safely screened by the hill, he turned back to look at the "magnificent
country residence," then swore softly under his breath, as, for the first
time, he took in the full meaning of the eccentric architecture.

Perched high upon the hill, with intervening shrubbery carefully cut down,
the Judson mansion was not one to inspire confidence in its possessor.
Outwardly, it was grey and weather-worn, with the shingles dropping off in
places. At the sides, the rambling wings and outside stairways, branching
off into space, conveyed the impression that the house had been recently
subjected to a powerful influence of the centrifugal sort. But worst of
all was the front elevation, with its two round windows, its narrow, long
window in the centre, and the low windows on either side of the front
door--the grinning, distorted semblance of a human face.

The bare, uncurtained windows loomed up boldly in the searching sunlight,
which spared nothing. The blue smoke rising from the kitchen chimney
appeared strangely like a plume streaming out from the rear. Harlan noted,
too, that the railing of the narrow porch extended almost entirely across
the front of the house, and remembered, dimly, that they had found the
steps at one side of the porch the night before. Not a single unpleasant
detail was in any way hidden, and he clutched instinctively at a tree as
he realised that the suppo