oo, but never noticed her till my last night in the place. Then I found
Antonio hammering the poor little beggar out in the garden, and I stopped
it. You'd have done the same. Afterwards, late that night, I went on
board the yacht and found her down in the saloon--a stowaway. The yacht
had started. I could have put back. I didn't. You wouldn't have done
either. She took refuge with me. I sheltered her. She came to me as a
boy. I treated her as such."

"You knew?" flung in Bunny.

Saltash's grin flashed across his dark features like a meteor through a
cloudy sky and was gone. "I--suspected, _mon ami_. But--I did not even
tell myself." That part of him that was French--a species of volatile
sentimentality--sounded in the words like the echo of a laugh in a minor
key. "I made a valet of her. I suffered her to clean my boots and brush
my clothes. I kept her in order--with this--upon occasion."

He held up the switch he carried.

"I don't believe it," said Bunny bluntly.

Saltash's shoulders went up. "You please yourself, _mon cher_. I am
telling you the truth. I treated her like a puppy. I was kind to her, but
never extravagantly kind. But I decided--eventually I decided--that it
was time to turn home. No game can last forever. So we returned, and on
our last night at sea we were rammed and sunk. Naturally that spoilt--or
shall I say somewhat precipitated?--my plans. We were saved, the two
of us together. And then was started that scandalous report of the woman
on the yacht." Again the laughter sounded in his voice. "You see, _mon
ami_, how small a spark can start a conflagration. In self-defence I had
to invent something, and I invented it quickly. I said she was Larpent's
daughter. I wonder if you would have thought of that. You'd have done it
if you had, I'll wager."

He turned upon the boy who strode in silence by his side with a gleam of
triumph in his eyes, but there was no answering gleam in Bunny's. He
moved heavily, staring straight before him, his face drawn in hard lines
of misery.

"Well," Saltash said, "that's all I have done. You now know the truth,
simple and unadorned, as Sheila Melrose in her simplicity does not know
it and probably would not comprehend it if she did."

"Leave her out of it!" said Bunny, in a strangled voice. "It was--the
obvious conclusion."

"Oh, the obvious!" Cynicism undisguised caught up the word. "Only the
young and innocent can ever really say with any conviction what is th