hen she first answered the knock,
Nelly was opening the door and peeping out into the hall.

The rest was done by the man without; he cast the door open with the
pressure of his foot, caught the girl in his arms, and kissed her; and
while he closed the door the girl slipped back and stood with one hand
pressed against her face, and her face held that delightful expression
halfway between laughter and embarrassment. As for Lord Nick, he did not
even smile. He was not, in fact, a man who was prone to gentle
expressions, but having been framed by nature for a strong dominance
over all around him, his habitual expression was a proud
self-containment. It would have been insolence in another man; in Lord
Nick it was rather leonine.

He was fully as tall as Jack Landis, but he carried his height easily,
and was so perfectly proportioned that unless he was seen beside another
man he did not look large. The breadth of his shoulders was concealed by
the depth of his chest; and the girth of his throat was made to appear
quite normal by the lordly size of the head it supported. To crown and
set off his magnificent body there was a handsome face; and he had the
combination of active eyes and red hair, which was noticeable in
Donnegan, too. In fact, there was a certain resemblance between the two
men; in the set of the jaw for instance, in the gleam of the eye, and
above all in an indescribable ardor of spirit, which exuded from them
both. Except, of course, that in Donnegan, one was conscious of all
spirit and very little body, but in Lord Nick hand and eye were terribly
mated. Looking upon so splendid a figure, it was no wonder that the
mountain desert had forgiven the crimes of Lord Nick because of the
careless insolence with which he treated the law. It requires an
exceptional man to make a legal life attractive and respected; it takes
a genius to make law-breaking glorious.

No wonder that Nelly Lebrun stood with her hand against her cheek,
looking him over, smiling happily at him, and questioning him about his
immediate past all in the same glance. He waved her back to her couch,
and she hesitated. Then, as though she remembered that she now had to
do with Lord Nick in person, she obediently curled up on the lounge, and
waited expectantly.

"I hear you've been raising the devil," said this singularly frank
admirer.

The girl merely looked at him.

"Well?" he insisted.

"I haven't done a thing," protested Nelly rather c