l
issue. "What did you mean yesterday when you said that you couldn't play
fair, but that you'd play as fair as you could?"

She turned from her contemplation of the stooping Antonio's back. "Did I
say that?"

He hardly heeded the question in the pleasure he got from this glimpse
of her green eyes. "You said that--or something very much like it."

His uncertainty gave her the chance to correct that which, in the light
of Claude's warning, might prove to have been an indiscretion. "I'm sure
I can't imagine. You must have--misunderstood me."

He pursued the topic not because he cared, but in order to make her look
at him again. "Oh no, I didn't. Don't you remember? It was after you
said that there was one thing that might happen--"

She was sure of her indiscretion now. He might even be setting a snare
for her. Dr. Sim Masterman might have withdrawn from her mother's case
in order to put the one brother on the other's tracks. If Claude was
right in his suspicions, there was reasonable ground for alarm. She
said, with assumed indifference: "Oh, that! That was nothing. Just a
fancy."

He still talked for the sake of talking, attaching no importance to her
replies. "Was it a fancy when you said that I would be one of the people
opposed to it--if it happened?"

"Well, yes. But you'd only be one among a lot." She shifted to firmer
ground. "I wasn't thinking of you in particular--or of any one in
particular."

"Were you thinking of any _thing_ in particular?"

The question threw her back on straight denial. "N-no; not exactly; just
a fancy."

"But I shouldn't be opposed to it, whatever it is--if it was to your
advantage."

His persistence deepened her distrust. A man whom she had seen only once
before would hardly display such an interest in her and her affairs
unless he had a motive, especially when that man was a Masterman. She
took refuge in her task with the azaleas. "No, not there, Antonio. Put
them there--like this--I'll show you."

The necessity for giving Antonio practical demonstration taking her to
the other side of the hothouse, Thor felt himself obliged to go. He went
with the greater regret since he had been unable to sound her on the
subject of Lois Willoughby's advances, though her skill in eluding him
heightened his respect. His disdain for the small arts of coquetry being
as sincere as his scorn of snobbery, he counted it to her credit that
she eluded him at all. There would be plenty of opportu