ent. The old lady had shown her teeth the other day,
when she had caught the onion-seller abusing her and had driven him out
of the grounds at the point of her sunshade. Miss Dymmock's
vituperations had not been all for the male delinquent. The rough side
of Aunt Sarah's tongue was like a nutmeg-grater, and she had rasped out
several rugged threats about not keeping a maid who was a bone of
contention to violent "followers."

Again she was conscious, deep down in her fickle heart, of a soft spot
for the faithful compatriot with whom she had scrambled about the rocks
of her native village when he had been a sunburnt fisher-lad and she a
bare-legged hoyden of fifteen. For Levi Levison she had cared not one
jot. If it had not been for the overthrow of the brilliant prospect
which she fondly believed a marriage with him would have implied she
would have borne Pierre Legros no ill-will for hacking his rival to
death. It would indeed have been a delicate compliment.

So it was that as she walked the deserted country road she wavered, and
as she wavered there came into view round a bend some way ahead a
pedestrian sauntering so leisurely that he had more the appearance of
keeping a tryst than of making for a destination. And, though the lady
for whom he was waiting knew it not, Mr. Travers Nugent was, in a sense,
keeping a tryst, and she was no less a personage than the damsel
advancing to meet him--Mademoiselle Louise Aubin herself.

As they met Louise was surprised to see the English gentleman stop and
raise his hat to her. She had never before exchanged a word with him, or
so much as given him a thought, though she knew him by sight as an
occasional caller at the Maynards' house in London, and had since
learned that he had a summer retreat at Ottermouth.

"Pardon me for addressing you without formal introduction," said Nugent
with the deference he would have used to a duchess, "but interest in
this terrible murder must be my excuse. I recognize you, of course, as
Miss Maynard's confidential companion. Can you inform me if any later
intelligence has been received at the Manor House? There was nothing but
vague rumour in the air when I left after the afternoon party."

He had to a nicety struck the correct note for "drawing" Mademoiselle
Louise. The winning smile, the doffed hat would have gone far; but the
promotion from lady's maid to "companion" made her conquest an easy
matter. Yet, coquette as she was, she delayed th