. You go. You go and have a good time."

"I don't want to go so awfully," she began hesitatingly. "I've been away
from you a lot in the last two years. I don't care so much about it."

"Yes, you do; you go." He was always keen for her pleasure, but in the
present case he seemed especially earnest.

"Want to get rid of me, huh?"

"No; you know I'll half die without you. But I am going to be fearfully
busy from now on,"--his mouth seemed hot and dry as he talked,--"it will
suit better now than ever. You go."

"Well, maybe," she said. She was accustomed to let her own fancy settle
such questions for her. "Maybe I'll go. Maybe I shan't." There was a
click at the front gate. "I expect that's Mr. Steering," she announced.

Madeira got out of his chair quickly. "If it is, I don't want to see
him," he said, "he--oh, he irritates me, that man,--always wanting to
dictate. I'll go in. Don't want ever to see him again,--and say, Pet?"

"Well, Dad?"

"I'd be glad if you would never see him again. Just stop where you are,
will you?"

She drew a long sighing breath. "Just stop where I am? Well, I'll see,"
she said, laughing and flushing in the warm, rich fashion of her skin,
but there was the faint far call of uneasiness in her laughter, like a
wind-whisper of coming rain. "Tell Samson to bring Mr. Steering out here
to me," she commanded, and Madeira went off toward the house and
disappeared through the green-latticed porch.

Inside the house he retired to the room that was known as his office,
locked the door and came over to his desk. As he did it a peculiar
consciousness of himself suffused him like the first fumes of a deadly
narcotic. He began to see that he was lifting his feet stealthily,
advancing them stealthily, stealthily setting them down, with the
soundless fall of a cat's foot on velvet. Reaching his desk, he half
fell into a chair there, a thin line of white froth between his lips,
his big face purplish. "Eh, God?" he cried, "what's this? what's this?"

The seizure passed as suddenly as it had come. By and by he heard
Steering pass through the house under Samson's escort. When the sound of
Steering's foot-steps had died away, Madeira took a letter from his
pocket, spread it open before him and read it over and over.

"Dear Crit," [the letter said] "I have thought this thing to a finish. I
want you to turn the Tigmores over to my cousin, Bruce Steering. Let him
start at once on the jack trail, that primros