with failure, he was not one to admit defeat."

"Hear that, Vi?" said the screw manufacturer, rising. "His Highness
means to come back and have another shy next season. There'll be a
chance for you to be the pride of the harem yet, if you choose to think
better of it."

Violet's laugh, as she also rose to join in the general movement, rang
out merrily, proving how lightly she had treated Bhagwan's wooing--how
little she realized the smouldering danger that lurked for her in the
steamer at Portland, lying ready to snatch her from peaceful Ottermouth
to undreamed of horrors in the unspeakable East.

"I hope he won't trouble," she said lightly. "I let him down easy last
time, but if it occurs again I shall have to be rude."

Leslie Chermside, following out of the dining-room, felt a prescience of
coming peril for the beautiful speaker, and it was apart and separate
from the plot in which he was to have taken such an ignoble part. From
himself he knew that she would never have aught but loving fealty, and,
so far as in him lay, protection. But in Nugent's words, uttered with
such seeming carelessness, yet so well considered, there had, he could
have sworn, sounded a note of menace, intended to be subtly conveyed to
himself, that defeat was not admitted.

And the pity of it was that in a day or two at most he must fly from
Ottermouth, unless he remained to be branded by that dirty little Jew as
an impostor. In either case, his championship would be a sorry thing to
stand between Violet Maynard and the fresh devices he feared were
already hatching in Travers Nugent's cunning brain.

CHAPTER IV

NUGENT MOVES A PAWN

Mr. Nugent did not seek further private speech with Leslie Chermside
while he remained at the Manor House. He acted in every respect as
though he accepted the young man's renunciation as final, and after a
saunter through the exquisite gardens with his host, asked that his car
might be brought round. Having only reached Ottermouth the previous
evening, he explained there were many things that claimed his attention
at home.

"All right, dear boy," said Montague Maynard in his loud jolly voice.
"Run out and see us whenever you can tear yourself away from golf and
the delights of the Ottermouth Club. Old Sarah Dymmock hates you like
the devil, but she don't bite so long as people don't want to hurt my
little Violet, and she's a good sportswoman. And you're too good a
sportsman yourself to mind an o