from the golden hearts of the roses; and did
not see, across the path a score of yards away, the tall figure of Joe
Ellison among the rosebushes, pruning-shears in hand, with which he
had been cutting out dead blossoms, gazing at her with that hungry,
admiring, speculative look with which he had regarded the young women
upon the beach.

Presently she heard Hunt's footsteps coming down the path. Then she
detected a second pair. Dick accompanying him, she thought. And then
Hunt appeared before her, and was saying in his big voice: "Miss
Cameron, permit me to present my friend, Mr. Brandon." And then he added
in a lowered voice, grinning with the impish delight of an overgrown boy
who is playing a trick: "Thought I'd better go through the motions of
introducing you people, so it would look as if you'd just met for the
first time." And with that he was gone.

Maggie had risen galvanically. For the moment she could only stare. Then
she got out his name.

"Larry!" she whispered. "You here?"

"Yes."

Astounded as she was, she had caught instantly the total lack of
amazement on Larry's part.

"You're--you're not surprised to see me?"

"No," he said evenly. "I knew you were here. And before that I knew you
were coming."

That was almost too much for Maggie. Hunt had known and Larry had known;
both were people belonging to her old life, both the last people
she expected to meet in such circumstances. She could only stare at
him--entirely taken aback by this meeting.

And indeed it was a strangely different meeting from the last time she
had seen him, at the Grantham; strangely different from those earlier
meetings down at the Duchess's when both had been grubs as yet
unmetamorphosized. Now standing in the arbor they looked a pair of
weekend guests, in keeping with the place. For, as Maggie had noted,
Larry in his well-cut flannels was as greatly transformed as Hunt.

It was Larry who ended the silence. "Shall we sit down?"

She mechanically sank to the bench, still staring at him.

"What are you doing here?" she managed to breathe.

"I belong here."

"Belong here?"

"I work here," he explained. "I'm called 'Mr. Brandon,' but Miss
Sherwood knows exactly who I am and what I've been."

"How long have you been here?"

"Since that night when Barney and Old Jimmie took you away to begin your
new career--the same night that I ran away from those gunmen who thought
I was a squealer, and from Casey and Gavegan."