umbers.

XXI

TWISTED TRYSTS

Mrs. Cristie found the lower floor of the Squirrel Inn quite deserted.
She stopped before a window in a Norman tower and looked out. Twilight
was fading, but there was a young moon in the sky. By stepping a little
to one side she could see the moon, with the evening star twinkling not
far away from it. She did not go out, however, but slowly wandered into
a long room under the roof of a Swiss chalet. Here she went out on a
queer little balcony and sat down; but her view was cut off by an
out-jutting upper story of the old English type, with rows of
small-paned windows, and she soon came in from the balcony. There was a
light burning in the taproom, and as she passed its open door she
stopped for a moment and gazed reflectively at the row of dilapidated
stuffed squirrels, each of which had once stood guard upon the
guide-post to the inn. But she took no note of the squirrels, nor of
anything else in the quiet room, but as she stood, and instinctively put
her finger to her forehead, a resolution came.

"I will be sensible, like Ida," she thought. "I will go out and let
things happen as they may."

She went out into the young moonlight and, glancing across the lawn,
saw, near the edge of the bluff that commanded the western view, two
persons sitting upon a bench. Their backs were towards her, but one of
them she knew to be Calthea Rose.

"I hope that is not poor Mr. Tippengray," said Mrs. Cristie to herself.
"If she has secured him already, and taken him out there, I am afraid
that even Ida will not be able to get him away from her. Ida must still
be at her supper. I should not have detained her so long."

But Ida was not at her supper. As she turned towards the end of the lawn
Mrs. Cristie saw her nurse-maid slowly strolling over the grass, a man
on each side of her. They were plainly to be seen, and one man was Mr.
Tippengray and the other Lanigan Beam. The three were engaged in earnest
conversation. Mrs. Cristie smiled.

"I need not have feared for Ida," she thought; "she must have made a
bold stroke to leave her rival in the lurch in that way, but I suppose
in order to get one man she has to take both. It is a little hard on
Miss Calthea"; and with an amused glance towards the couple on the bluff
she moved towards the gardens. Her mind was in a half-timorous and
undetermined state, in which she would have been glad to wander about by
herself and to meet nobody, or, if it