"Fairly well," I said cautiously. "Not as well as I would like to. I
dined with her last week in Washington. And--I knew her before that."

Forbes touched the bell instead of going out, and told the servant who
answered to see if Mr. Granger's suitcase had gone. If not, to bring it
across the hail. Then he came back to his former position on the bed.

"You see, we feel responsible for Allie--near relation and all that," he
began pompously. "And we can't talk to the people here at the
house--all the men are in love with her, and all the women are jealous.
Then--there's a lot of money, too, or will be."

"Confound the money!" I muttered. "That is--nothing. Razor slipped."

"I can tell you," he went on, "because you don't lose your head over
every pretty face--although Allie is more than that, of course. But
about a month ago she went away--to Seal Harbor, to visit Janet MacLure.
Know her?"

"She came home to Richmond yesterday, and then came down here--Allie, I
mean. And yesterday afternoon Dolly had a letter from Janet--something
about a second man--and saying she was disappointed not to have had
Alison there, that she had promised them a two weeks' visit! What do
you make of that? And that isn't the worst. Allie herself wasn't in
the room, but there were eight other women, and because Dolly had put
belladonna in her eyes the night before to see how she would look, and
as a result couldn't see anything nearer than across the room, some one
read the letter aloud to her, and the whole story is out. One of the
cats told Granger and the boy proposed to Allie to-day, to show her he
didn't care a tinker's dam where she had been."

"Good boy!" I said, with enthusiasm. I liked the Granger fellow--since
he was out of the running. But Sam was looking at me with suspicion.

"Blake," he said, "if I didn't know you for what you are, I'd say you
were interested there yourself."

Being so near her, under the same roof, with even the tie of a dubious
secret between us, was making me heady. I pushed Forbes toward the door.

"I interested!" I retorted, holding him by the shoulders. "There isn't a
word in your vocabulary to fit my condition. I am an island in a sunlit
sea of emotion, Sam, a--an empty place surrounded by longing--a--"

"An empty place surrounded by longing!" he retorted. "You want your
dinner, that's what's the matter with you--"

I shut the door on him then. He seemed suddenly sordid. Dinner, I
thought! Althou