r affair with Donald Lyttleton, the
kindness of Mrs. Gosnold, or the riddle of the vanished jewelry.

Now and again people passed her and gave her curious glances. She paid
them no heed. The fact that they went in pairs, male and female after
their kind, failed to re-excite envy in her bosom.

There is deep satisfaction to be distilled from consciousness of the
love of even an unwelcome lover.

She thought no longer unkindly but rather pitifully of poor, tactless,
rough-shod Mr. Trego.

When at length she stirred and rose it was with a regretful sigh that,
matters being as they were with her, she was unable to reward his
devotion with something warmer than friendship only.

Friendship, of course, she could no more deny the poor man. . . .

CHAPTER XV

FALSE WITNESS

Sally failed, however, fully to appreciate how long it was that she
had rested there, moveless upon that secluded marble seat, spellbound
in the preoccupation of those thoughts, at once long and sweet with
the comfort of a solaced self-esteem, for which she had to thank the
author of her first proposal of marriage.

She rose and turned back to Gosnold House only on the prompting of
instinct, vaguely conscious that the night had now turned its nadir
and the time was drawing near when she must present herself first to
her employer with the tale of last night's doings, then to Savage to
learn his version of the happenings in New York.

But by the time she reminded herself of these two matters she found
that they had receded to a status of strangely diminished importance
in her understanding. It was her duty, of course, a duty imposed upon
her by her dependent position as much as by her affection for the
lady, to tell Mrs. Gosnold all she knew without any reservation
whatever; and it was equally her duty to herself, as a matter of
common self-protection, to hear what Savage professed such anxiety to
communicate. And not quite definitely realising that it was Mr.
Trego's passion which overshadowed both of these businesses, she
wondered mildly at her unconcern with either. Somehow she would gladly
have sealed both lips and ears to them and gone on basking
uninterruptedly in the warmth of her sudden self-complacence.

By no means the least remarkable property of the common phenomenon of
love is the contentment which it never fails to kindle in the bosom of
its object, regardless of its source. In a world where love is far
more general than aversio