to be in a daring, madcap mood and Saltash
laughed and jested with her as though she had been indeed the child she
looked. Only at parting, when she would have danced away, he suddenly
stopped her with a word.

"Nonette!"

She stood still as if at a word of command; there had been something of
compulsion in his tone.

He did not look at her, and the smile he wore was wholly alien to the
words he spoke.

"Be careful how you go! And don't see Bunny again--till I have seen him!"

A hard breath went through Toby. She stood like a statue, the two
children clasping her hands. Her blue eyes gazed at him with a wide
questioning. Her face was white.

"Why? Why?" she whispered at length.

His look flashed before her vision like the grim play of a sword. "That
girl remembers you. She will give you away. She's probably at it now.
I'll see him--tell him the truth if necessary. Anyhow--leave him to me!"

"Tell him--the truth?" The words came from her like a cry. There was a
sudden terror in her eyes. He made a swift gesture of dismissal. "Go,
child! Go! Whatever I do will make it all right for you. I'm standing
by. Don't be afraid! Just--go!"

It was a definite command. She turned to obey, the little girls still
clinging to her. The next moment she was running lightly back with them,
and Saltash turned in the opposite direction and passed out of sight
round the corner of the house on his way to the stable-yard.

CHAPTER XIII

THE TRUTH

He went with careless tread as his fashion was, whistling the gay air to
which all England was dancing that season. His swarthy countenance wore
the half-mischievous, half-amused expression with which it was his custom
to confront--and baffle--the world at large. No one knew what lay behind
that facile mask. Only the very few suspected that it hid aught beyond a
genial wickedness of a curiously attractive type.

His spurs rang upon the white stones, and Sheila Melrose, standing beside
her father's car in the shadow of some buildings, turned sharply and saw
him. Her face was pale; it had a strained expression. But it changed at
sight of him. She regarded him with that look of frozen scorn which once
she had flung him when they had met in the garish crowd at Valrosa.

Bunny was stooping over the car, but he became aware of Saltash almost in
the same moment, and stood up straight to face him. Sheila was pale, but
he was perfectly white, and there were heavy drops of perspiration