look as he gave her
with his pursed mouth and his flashing eyes.

"What does this mean?" he demanded, in the tone of distant thunder, with
little less than lightning in his glance.

"I think that's for me to ask," laughed Rachel, standing up to him with
a nerve that surprised herself. "I didn't know that you began so early!"

A decanter and a glass were among the things upon the tray.

"And I didn't know it of you," he retorted. "Why are you up?"

Rachel told him the simple truth in simple fashion. His tone of voice
did not hurt her; there was no opposite extreme of tenderness to call to
mind for the contrast which inflicts the wound. On the other hand, there
was a certain satisfaction in having for once ruffled that smooth mien
and smoother tongue; it was one of her rare glimpses of the real man,
but as usual it was a glimpse and nothing more.

"I must apologize," said Steel, with an artificiality which was seldom
so transparent; "my only excuse is that you startled me out of my temper
and my manners. And I was upset to begin with. I have a poor fellow in
rather a bad way in the boathouse."

"Not one of the gardeners, I hope?" queried Rachel; but her kind anxiety
subsided in a moment, for his dark eyes were measuring her, his dark
mind meditating a lie; and now she knew him well enough to read him thus
far in his turn.

"No," replied Steel, deciding visibly against the lie; "no, not one of
our men, or anybody else belonging to these parts; but some unlucky
tramp, whom I imagine some of our neighbors would have given into
custody forthwith. I found him asleep on the lawn; of course he had no
business upon the premises; but he's so far gone that I'm taking him
something to pull him together before I turn him off."

"I should have said," remarked Rachel, thoughtfully, "that tea or coffee
would have been better for him than spirits."

Steel smiled indulgently across the tray.

"Most ladies would say the same," he replied, "but very few men."

"And why didn't you bring him into the house," pursued Rachel, looking
her husband very candidly in the face, "instead of taking him all that
way to the lake, and giving yourself so much more trouble than was
necessary?"

The smile broadened upon Steel's thin lips, perhaps because it had
entirely vanished from his glittering eyes.

"That," said he, "is a question you would scarcely ask if you had seen
the poor creature for yourself. I don't intend you to see him; he i