ople whom I had thought safely settled
in the room below had come out and were beginning to mount the topmost
flight of stairs. This was indeed a most awkward predicament for me, and
I debated for a moment whether my best course would not be to go boldly
down the stairs and pass them, rather than retreat to the top room. If I
had chosen the former course how differently things might have turned
out; at any rate, for better or worse, the situation as it exists to-day
might have presented itself in quite another form."

Edith Morriston glanced quickly at Gifford as he uttered the reflection.
She seemed about to speak, but checked the impulse, and he continued:

"Treading noiselessly, I bolted up the remaining stairs and went into the
dark room at the top. At the door, which stood open, I stopped and
listened. To my intense vexation, for the situation was becoming
decidedly unpleasant, the pair were still coming up. In silence now, but
I could hear their approaching footsteps and the rustle of the lady's
dress. Unfortunately, there was no corner on the top landing where I
could stand hidden, so I was forced to draw back into the room.

"Happily it had been so familiar to me from childhood that I could find
my way about it in the dark. I well remembered the little inner room
formed by the bartizan of the tower, and into this I tip-toed, feeling
horribly guilty. If only I had not been in that suspicious brown suit! In
evening clothes there would, of course, have been no necessity for this
surreptitious retreat. I devoutly hoped that the two were merely bent on
exploring the place and that the darkness of the old lumber-room would
quickly satisfy their curiosity and send them down again. I heard them
come into the room, the man speaking in a tone so low that the words were
indistinguishable from where I stood; and then the sound of the door
being shut struck my ear unpleasantly.

"Then the man spoke in a more audible voice, a voice which in a flash I
recognized as Henshaw's. And his first words caught my attention with an
unpleasant grip."

CHAPTER XXI

GIFFORD CONTINUES HIS STORY

"'Failing to get the regular invitation I had a right to expect, I have
had to take this mode of seeing you,' I just caught the words in
Henshaw's metallic, rather penetrating voice.

"The lady's reply was given in a tone so low that at the distance I stood
the words were indistinguishable.

"'Unmanly?' he exclaimed, evidently tak