omething would
warn him if she really needed his help.

The park and woodland were still: only the mournful hooting of an owl,
the sad sighing of the wind in the old elms broke the peaceful silence
of this summer's night.

CHAPTER VII

THE STRANGER WITHIN THE GATES

Sue waited--expectant and still--until the last sound of the young man's
footsteps had died away in the direction of the house.

Then with quick impulsive movements she ran to the gate; her hands
sought impatiently in the dark for the primitive catch which held it to.
A large and rusty bolt! she pulled at it--clumsily, for her hands were
trembling. At last the gate flew open; she was out in the woods, peering
into the moonlit thicket, listening for that most welcome sound, the
footsteps of the man she loved.

"My prince!" she exclaimed, for already he was beside her--apparently he
had lain in wait for her, and now held her in his arms.

"My beautiful and gracious lady," he murmured in that curiously muffled
voice of his, which seemed to endow his strange personality with
additional mystery.

"You heard? ... you saw just now? ..." she asked timidly, fearful of
encountering his jealous wrath, that vehement temper of his which she
had learned to dread.

Strangely enough he replied quite gently: "Yes ... I saw ... the young
man loves you, my beautiful Suzanne! ... and he will hate me now ..."

He had always called her Suzanne--and her name thus spoken by him, and
with that quaint foreign intonation of his had always sounded infinitely
sweet.

"But I love you with all my heart," she said earnestly, tenderly, her
whole soul--young, ardent, full of romance, going out to him with all
the strength of its purity and passion. "What matter if all the world
were against you?"

As a rule when they met thus on the confines of the wood, they would
stand together by the gate, forming plans, talking of the future and of
their love. Then after a while they would stroll into the park, he
escorting her, as far as he might approach the house without being seen.

She had no thought that Richard Lambert would be on the watch. Nay! so
wholly absorbed was she in her love for this man, once she was in his
presence, that already--womanlike--she had forgotten the young student's
impassioned avowal, his jealousy, his very existence.

And she loved these evening strolls in the great, peaceful park, at
evening, when the birds were silent in their nests, and the gr