o trembling, looking very pale
again and as if she might faint.

"Well, it is no great matter, as the intruders were bluffed off," he said
suavely, putting the question aside. "I will send one of Briscoe's grooms
to investigate the premises. But now, suppose we go to the piazza, and
let you rest there and recover from the strain to your ankle." Once more
he glanced down at the dainty shoe with its high French heel. "I don't
wonder it turned. A proper shoe for mountaineering!" That rancor against
a frivolity of feminine fashion that holds a menace to health or safety,
so characteristic of the utilitarian masculine mind, was a touch of his
old individuality, and it made him seem to her more like himself of yore.
The resemblance did not tend to confirm her composure, and she was almost
piteous as she protested that she could not, she would not, go near the
hotel again.

"Why, you need not, then," he reassured her abruptly, waiving the
possibility of insistence, as much as to say it was no concern of his.

"I might walk to the observatory," she suggested, "and--and--I need not
detain you then."

"In view of three bandits in slouched hats, although all on the
back-track--and although I am convinced that it was but their astral
apparitions with which you were favored--I will venture to intrude my
society until I can see you to the Briscoe bungalow."

"Oh, there's no intrusion," she rejoined petulantly. "You must know I
couldn't mean that!"

"I never know what you mean, I am sure!" he said with that tense note of
satire. Then he paused with a vague wonder at himself thus to trench on
the emotional phases between them that must be buried forever.
Remembering her own allusion that morning, her cry of regret and appeal,
he was apprehensive of some renewal of the topic that he had thus
invited, and he began to move hastily down the slope, supporting her with
care, but with a certain urgency too. He was obviously eager to terminate
the conversational opportunity, and when it was requisite to pause to
rest he improved the respite by beckoning to one of the stablemen passing
near, bound toward a pasture in the rear of the hotel with a halter in
his hand, and ordering him to investigate the building to discover any
signs of intrusion.

The man hearkened in patent surprise, then asked if he might defer the
commission till he had harnessed Fairy-foot, Mr. Briscoe having ordered
out the dog-cart and his favorite mare.

"Plenty