ing all over
her face. She remembered--and the memory seemed to stab her--a day
long, long ago when she had lain in this man's arms in the extremity
of helpless suffering, and had heard him praying above her head,
brokenly, passionately, for something far different--something from
which she had come to shrink with a nameless, overmastering dread.

She quickened her pace in the silence that followed. The rain was
coming down sharply. Reaching the door that led into the doctor's
walled garden, she stretched out her hand with impetuous haste to push
it open.

Instantly, with disconcerting suddenness, Nick dropped the
hockey-stick and swooped upon it like a bird of prey.

"Who gave you that?" he demanded.

He had spied a hoop of diamonds upon her third finger. She could
not see his eyes under the flickering lids, but he held her wrist
forcibly, and it seemed to her that there was a note of savagery in
his voice.

Her heart beat fast for a few seconds, so fast that she could not find
her voice. Then, almost under her breath, "Blake gave it to me," she
said. "Blake Grange."

"Yes?" said Nick. "Yes?"

Suddenly he looked straight at her, and his eyes were alight, fierce,
glowing. But she felt a curious sense of scared relief, as if he were
behind bars,--an eagle caged, of which she need have no fear.

"We are engaged to be married," she said quietly.

There fell a momentary silence, and a voice cried out in her soul that
she had stabbed him through the bars.

Then in a second Nick dropped her hands and stooped to pick up the
hockey-stick. His face as he stood up again flashed back to its old,
baffling gaiety.

"What ho!" he said lightly. "Then I'm in time to dance at the wedding.
Pray accept my heartiest congratulations!"

Muriel murmured her thanks with her face averted. She was no longer
afraid merely, but strangely, inexplicably ashamed.

CHAPTER XXVIII

THE LION'S SKIN

The news of Nick's return spread like wildfire through the doctor's
house, and the whole establishment assembled to greet him. Jim himself
came striding out into the rain to shake his hand and escort him in.

His "Hullo, you scapegrace!" had in it little of sentiment, but there
was nothing wanting in his welcome in the opinion of the recipient
thereof.

Nick's rejoinder of "Hullo, you old buffer!" was equally free from any
gloss of eloquence, but he hooked his hand in the doctor's arm as he
made it, and kept it there.

Jim g