"To find Una without
the lion is a piece of good fortune I had scarcely prayed for. And what
was the persuasion that you used at all to keep the monster in his den?"

She glanced up, half-startled by his speech. What did this man know
about her?

"If you mean my husband," she said at last, "I did not persuade him. He
never wished or intended to come."

Her companion laughed as one well pleased.

"Very generous of him!" he commented, in a tone that sent the blood to
her cheeks.

He guided her dexterously among the dancers. The girl's breath came
quickly, unevenly, but her feet never faltered.

"If I were the lion," said her partner daringly, "by the powers, I'd
play the part! I wouldn't be a tame beast, egad! If Una went out to a
fancy ball, my faith, I would go too!"

Lady Brooke uttered a little, excited laugh. The words caught her
interest.

"And suppose Una went without your leave?" she said.

The Irishman looked at her with a humorous twist at one corner of his
mouth.

"I'm thinking that I'd still go too," he said.

"But if you didn't know?" She asked the question with a curious
vehemence. Her instinct told her that, however he might profess to
trifle, here at least was a man.

"That wouldn't happen," he said, with conviction, "if I were the lion."

The music was quickening to the _finale_, and she felt the strong arm
grow tense about her.

"Come!" he said. "We will go into the garden."

She went with him because it seemed that she must, but deep in her heart
there lurked a certain misgiving. There was an almost arrogant air of
power about this man. She wondered what Sir Roland would say if he knew,
and comforted herself almost immediately with the reflection that he
never could know. He had gone to Scotland, and she did not expect him
back for several weeks.

So she turned aside with this stranger, and passed out upon his arm into
the dusk of the soft spring night.

"You know these gardens well?" he questioned.

She came out of her meditations.

"Not really well. Lady Blythebury and I are friends, but we do not visit
very often."

"And that but secretly," he laughed, "when the lion is absent?" She did
not answer him, and he continued after a moment: "'Pon my life, the
very mention of him seems to cast a cloud. Let us draw a magic circle,
and exclude him!" He waved his wand. "You knew that I was a magician?"

There was a hint of something more than banter in his voice. They had
reached t