d, his back turned to her, and
near him in a low arm-chair was her husband. He seemed to be reading
something, and it was evident that her entrance had been unobserved
either by him or by his guest.

For a second's space Eden stood very still. There was much of the child
in her nature, and during that second she meditated on the feasibility
of giving them both some little surprise. Then at once, as though
impelled by invisible springs, she crossed the room very swiftly, very
noiselessly, her fan and the fold of her dress in one hand, the other
free for mischief, and just when she reached the chair in which her
husband sat, she bent over him, from his unwarned fingers she snatched a
note, and with a rippling laugh that was like the shiver of sound on the
strings of a guitar, she waved it exultingly in the air.

Mr. Usselex looked up at once, but he had looked too late; the note had
gone from him. He started, he made a movement to repossess himself of
it, but Eden, with the ripple still in her voice, stepped back, laughed
again, and nodded to Arnswald, who had turned and bowed. "What is it?"
she cried; "what have you two been concocting? No, you don't," she
continued. Her voice was unsteady with merriment, her eyes wickedly
jubilant. Usselex had made another attempt to recapture the letter, and
flaunting it, Tantalus-fashion, above her head, she defied and eluded
him, gliding backwards, her head held like a swan's, a trifle to one
side. "No, you don't," she repeated, and still the laughter rippled from
her.

"Eden!" her husband expostulated, "Eden--"

"You shall not have it, sir; you shall not." And with a pirouette she
fluttered yet further away, the bit of paper held daintily and aloft
between forefinger and thumb. "Tell me this instant what you have been
doing all day. There, you needn't look at Mr. Arnswald. He won't help
you. Will you, Mr. Arnswald? Of course you won't."

Usselex, conscious of the futility of pursuit, made no further effort.
In his face was an anxiety which his fair tormentor did not see. Once he
turned to Arnswald, and Arnswald gave him an answering glance, and once
his lips moved, but whatever he may have intended to say the words must
have stuck in his throat. And Eden, woman-like, seeing that she was no
longer pursued, advanced to a spot just beyond his reach, where she
hovered tauntingly, yet wary of his slightest movement and prepared at
the first suspicion of reprisal to spread her wings