ause Barbara had not
taken herself away from him, and in the rush of joy had forgotten what
it would mean for her to be without her mother.

She was alone now with Trevor d'Arcy, at Gorston Old Hall.

CHAPTER XIII

Denin cabled an answer to Barbara, and then began a letter to her. He
was in the midst of it, when he was disturbed by a caller, a man he had
never seen before. Expecting no one, the hermit of the Mirador had been
writing out of doors, in the pergola, and so was caught without a
chance of escape. He sprang up and stood in front of the little table
on which were his paper and ink, as if to protect the letter from the
touch of a stranger's eyes. But the visitor, who had caught sight of
John Sanbourne through the network of leaves and flowers, appeared
blissfully ignorant that he was unwelcome.

He was tall, almost as tall as Denin himself, though he looked less
than his height, because of a loose stoutness which hung upon him as if
his clothes were untidily padded. His large face, and the whites of his
eyes, and his big teeth, were all of much the same shade of yellow; and
his hair, turning gray, had streaks of that color under the Panama hat
which he did not remove.

"Good afternoon. I suppose you are Mr. Sanbourne?" he remarked, in a
throaty voice, with a certain air of condescension which told that here
was no author-worshiping pilgrim. "My name is Carl Pohlson Bradley."

"Ah! How do you do?" replied Denin aloofly. He wanted to go on with his
letter.

"I'm pretty well, thank you," responded the other, accepting the
suggested solicitude for his health as fact, not a fiction of
politeness. "I got here this morning. Staying at the Potter, of course.
I been taking a look round the place."

"Ah!" said Denin again. He could not think--and did not much care to
think--of anything else to say. But the large yellow face changed
slightly, in surprise. "I expect you heard I was likely to come, didn't
you?"

"No," said Denin. "Not to my recollection." Then more kindly, "I'm
rather a hermit. I go out very little, and have only a few callers. I
don't get much news, except what I see in the papers."

"It _was_ in the papers." The tone in which Mr. Carl Pohlson Bradley
gave this piece of information suggested that his prominence was
international as well as physical.

"Can he be a New York reporter?" thought Denin, his heart sinking.

But the caller had pulled from a pocket of his brown tweed coat a
n