ng rash and foolish? Are you going to be kind too?"

She broke into a peal of shrill and bitter laughter. Then her head went
down upon her hands, and she gave herself up to such a passion of
sobbing and tears as was quite beyond all Hillyard's experience. Yet he
would rather hear those sobs and see her bowed shoulders shaking under
the violence of them than listen again to the dreadful laughter which
had gone before. He had not the knowledge which could enable him to
understand her sudden outburst, nor did he acquire that knowledge until
long afterwards. But he understood that quite unwittingly he had touched
some painful chord in that wayward nature.

"I am going to take you back in my motor-car," he said. "I'll be
downstairs with the breakfast ready."

She had probably eaten nothing, he reckoned, since teatime the day
before. Food was the steadying thing she needed now. He went to the door
which Jenny Prask held open for him.

"Don't leave her!" he breathed in a whisper.

Jenny Prask smiled.

"Not me, sir," she said fervently.

Hillyard remembered with comfort some words which she had spoken in
appreciation of the loving devotion of her maid.

"In three-quarters of an hour," said Jenny; and later on that morning,
with a great fear removed from his heart, Hillyard drove Stella Croyle
back to London.

CHAPTER XII

IN BARCELONA

It was nine o'clock on a night of late August.

The restaurant of the Maison Doree in the Plaza Cataluna at Barcelona
looks across the brilliantly-lighted square from the south side. On the
pavement in front of it and of its neighbour, the Cafe Continental, the
vendors of lottery tickets were bawling the lucky numbers they had for
sale. Even in this wide space the air was close and stale. Within, a few
people left over in the town had strayed in to dine at tables placed
against the walls under flamboyant decorations in the style of
Fragonard. At a table Hillyard was sitting alone over his coffee. Across
the room one of the panels represented a gleaming marble terrace
overlooking a country-side bathed in orange light; and on the terrace
stood a sedan chair with drawn curtains, and behind the chair stood a
saddled white horse. Hillyard had dined more than once during the last
few months at the Maison Doree; and the problem of that picture had
always baffled him. A lovers' tryst! But where were the lovers? In some
inner room shaded from the outrage of that orange light which n