and t' them
as does. I'm goin' t' fetch that feller back. I know his kind, the city
breeds 'em! Maybe the bracin' air down here will help him. Come along,
Maud Grace, it's nateral enough fur me t' take you home frum Janet's."
Janet made no further effort to change Mark's intention; and he and Maud
went away together.

When Janet heard them close the garden gate, she went into the bedroom,
took the money box, that poor Maud had so diligently sought, from the
top shelf of the closet, and put it in a bureau drawer; then she turned
the key in the drawer for the first time in all the years.

CHAPTER IX

"Well, it's a relief to me, Dick, to know that you do know!" Mr. Devant
shrugged his shoulders, and laughed lightly. "Katharine and I have had a
sneaking desire to ask you if you'd found us out, but we waited for you
to make the first move."

"I'm slow to move in any game," Thornly replied. "I rather think it
comes from my chess training. When a child begins that pastime, as you
might say, in his cradle, with such a teacher as father, it's apt to
influence his character."

"Exactly. Have a cigar, Dick; it's beastly lonely to puff alone."

"Thanks, no. I've smoked too much in my hut on the Hills. Being alone
always drives me to a cigar."

The two men sat in the library at Bluff Head. A fire of driftwood
crackled on the hearth and a stiff wind roared around the house.

"Of course we had no right to enter your studio,"--Mr. Devant spoke
slowly between the puffs of smoke,--"except the right that says all is
fair in love and war. I admit that I was shaking in my boots that day
for fear you might come in upon us. Katharine was braver than I. You
must own, Dick, that you hadn't treated the girl quite fair."

"I do not grant that, Mr. Devant. I think Katharine had no cause for
complaint. Good Lord! a doctor's wife might quite as well feel herself
aggrieved because her husband's dissecting room is closed to her."

"Come, now, Dick!" Devant threw his head back and laughed; "it's
carrying the thing too far when you liken the Pimpernel to a
disagreeably defunct subject."

"It all goes to the making of one's art; that is what I mean. It belongs
to the art and need not be dragged into public to satisfy a woman's
morbid curiosity."

"Or a man's?" The laugh was gone from the face of the older man.

"Or a man's, since you insist." Thornly looked into the depths of the
rich glow upon the grate and took small heed of his