too long," she said to me carelessly as I opened the
dining-room door for her. "I want to sing 'Ohe Charmette' to you.

"I won't be long," I answered, thinking what exquisite eyes she had.

She turned, and went out in her delicious, thin way. No wonder she had
made skeletons the rage in London. When I came back to the dinner-table
Inley was sitting with both his brown hands clenched on the cloth. His
black eyes--inherited from his dead mother, who had been one of the
Neapolitan aristocracy--were glittering.

"What is it, Nino?" I asked as I sat down.

We had been such intimate friends that even my five years' absence
abroad had not built up a barrier between us.

"I wonder if it is Miss Bassett?" he said, looking at me earnestly.

"But was she a great friend of yours?" I said. "If Lady Inley's
description of her is accurate, I can hardly imagine so."

"Vere doesn't know what she's saying."

"Then Miss Bassett----"

"Oh, she does look like that; dried up, unemotional, tame, English, even
comic."

"The regular spinster, eh?"

"She looks it. But, damn it all, Vere has no business to say she has no
emotions, to wonder why such people are born. But she doesn't know--Vere
doesn't know."

His agitation grew, and was inexplicable to me. But I knew Inley, knew
that he was bound to tell me what was on his mind. He could be reserved,
but not with me. So I took a cigar, cut the end off it deliberately,
struck a match, lighted it, and began to smoke in silence. He followed
my example quickly, and then said:

"Vere talks like that, and, but for Miss Bassett, Vere would have been
murdered two years ago."

I started, and dropped my cigar on the table.

"Murdered!"

"Yes; and I----"

He fixed his eyes on me, and put his hand up to his throat. Nino was
half Neapolitan, and I saw a man being hanged. I picked up my cigar with
a hand that slightly shook.

"But," I said, "I always thought Lady Inley and you were very happy
together."

It sounded banal, even ridiculous, but I hardly knew what to say. I was
startled. The tolling of the bell, too, was getting on my nerves.

"One doesn't write such things," he said. "You've been abroad for
years."

"It's all right now?"

He nodded.

"I suppose so. Vere has never had the least suspicion."

He drew his chair closer to mine, and was about to go on speaking when
the servants came in with the coffee.

"Who's the bell tolling for, Hurst?" he said to the butler.

"I