e that day, a most unusual occurrence. His white hair
glistened with brilliantine, and there was a gardenia in his
buttonhole. Some of the old fire had returned to his eyes, and his
tongue had regained its once invariable knack of paying charming
compliments. In his excitement and delight he departed from his rigid
diet, and, his wife's attention being focussed upon George Harley,
punished the champagne with something of his old vigor, and revived as
a natural result many of the stories which Joan and her mother had been
told ad nauseam over any number of years with so much freshness as to
make them seem almost new.

Mrs. Harley, wearing a steady smile, was performing the painful feat of
listening with one ear to the old gentleman and with the other to the
old lady. All her sympathy was with her unfortunate and uneasy husband
who looked exactly like a great nervous St. Bernard being teased by a
Pekinese.

Joan missed none of the underlying humor of the whole thing. It was
amusing and satisfactory to be treated as the guest of honor in a house
in which she had always been regarded as the naughty and rebellious
child. She was happy in being able to put her usually morose
grandfather into such high spirits and moved to a mixture of mirth and
pity at the sight of George Harley's plucky efforts. Also she had
brought away with her from the girl she called the fairy a strengthened
desire to play the game and a good feeling that Marty was nearer to her
than he had been for a long and trying week. It's true that from time
to time she caught in her grandmother's eyes that queer look of
triumphant glee that had disturbed her when they met and the same
expression of malicious spite at the corner of Gleave's sunken mouth
which had made her wonder what he knew, but these things she waved
aside. Instinct, and her complete knowledge of Mrs. Cumberland Ludlow's
temperament, made her realize that if the old lady could find a way to
get even with her for having run off she would leave no stone unturned,
and that she would not hesitate to use the cunning ex-fighting man to
help her. But, after all, what could they do? It would be foolish to
worry.

Far from foolish, if she had had an inkling of the trap that had been
laid for her and into which she was presently going to fall without
suspicion.

The facts were that Gleave had seen Martin drive up to his house with
Tootles, had watched them riding and walking together throughout the
w