pped
a drayman's team just as readily as yours last night--and as
invulnerable as that marble statue."

He pointed to a statue of Adonis which stood whitely on the edge of the
lawn, and she raised her eyes and looked at it dreamily.

"I could break that thing if I had a big hammer," she said.

"I daresay," he said. "But can't break Stafford. Honestly "--he looked
at her--"I wish you could!"

"Why?" she asked, turning her eyes on him for the first time.

Howard was silent for a moment, then he looked at her with a curious
gravity.

"Because it would be good for him: because I am afraid for him."

"Afraid?" she echoed.

"Yes," he said, with a nod. "Some day he will run against something
that will bring him to smash. Some woman--But I beg your pardon. Do you
know, Miss Falconer, that you have a dangerous way of leading one to
speak the truth--which one should never--or very rarely--do. Why, on
earth am I telling you all this about Stafford Orme?"

She shrugged her shoulders.

"You were saying 'some woman,'" she said.

He gave a sigh of resignation.

"You are irresistible! Some woman who will be quite unworthy of him.
It's always the case. The block of ice you can not smash with your
biggest hammer is broken into smithereens by a needle. That's the peril
before Stafford--but let us hope he will prove the exception to the
rule and escape. He's safe at present, at any rate."

She though of the scene she had witnessed, the girl sitting sideways on
Stafford Orme's horse, and her face flushed for an instant.

"Are you sure?" she said.

"Quite!" he responded, confidently. "I know all Stafford's flirtations,
great and small: if there was anything serious he would tell me; and as
he hasn't--there isn't."

She laughed; the slow, soft laugh which made Howard think suddenly,
strangely, of a sleepy tigress he had once watched in a rajah's zoo, as
she lay basking in the sun: a thing of softness and beauty and--death.

"We've had a most amusing conversation, Mr. Howard," she said. "I don't
know when I've been so interested--or so tempted."

"Tempted?" He looked at her with a slow, expectant smile.

"Oh, yes," she murmured, turning her eyes upon him with a half-mocking
light in them. "You have forgotten that you have been talking to a
woman."

"I don't deny it," he said. "It's the finest compliment I could pay
you. But--after?"

"And that to a woman your account of your hero-friend is--a
challenge."

He nodde