the shadows, the willowy outline of her small and slender
figure, and the gracious forward bend of her head.

The company present caught sight of Orde standing in the doorway, and
suspended occupations to shout at him joyfully. He was evidently a
favourite. The strange girl in the corner turned to him a white, long
face, of which he could see only the outline and the redness of the lips
where the lamplight reached them. She leaned slightly forward and the
lips parted. Orde's muscular figure, standing square and uncompromising
in the doorway, the out-of-door freshness of his complexion, the
steadiness of his eyes laughing back a greeting, had evidently attracted
her. Or perhaps anything was a relief from the Incubus.

"So you're back at last, are you, Jack?" drawled Jane in her lazy,
good-natured way. "Come and meet Miss Bishop. Carroll, I want to present
Mr. Orde."

Orde bowed ceremoniously into the penumbra cast by the lamp's broad
shade. The girl inclined gracefully her small head with the glossy hair.
The Incubus, his thin hands clasped on his knee, his sallow face twisted
in one of its customary wry smiles, held to the edge of his chair with
characteristic pertinacity.

"Well, Walter," Orde addressed him genially, "are you having a good
time?"

"Yes-indeed!" replied the Incubus as though it were one word.

His chair was planted squarely to exclude all others. Orde surveyed the
situation with good-humour.

"Going to keep the other fellow from getting a chance, I see."

"Yes-indeed!" replied the Incubus.

Orde bent over, and with great ease lifted Incubus, chair, and all, and
set him facing Mignonne Smith and the croquet-ball.

"Here, Mignonne," said he, "I've brought you another assistant."

He returned to the lamp, to find the girl, her dark eyes alight with
amusement, watching him intently. She held the tip of a closed fan
against her lips, which brought her head slightly forward in an attitude
as though she listened. Somehow there was about her an air of poise,
of absolute balanced repose quite different from Jane's rather awkward
statics, and in direct contrast to Mignonne's dynamics.

"Walter is a very bright man in his own line," said Orde, swinging
forward a chair, "but he mustn't be allowed any monopolies."

"How do you know I want him so summarily removed?" the girl asked him,
without changing either her graceful attitude of suspended motion or the
intentness of her gaze.

"Well," argued Ord