!" ejaculated Shelton.

"I think," said Mr. Dennant, with bent knees carefully measuring his next
shot, "that you ought to make inquiries--ah! missed it! Awkward these
hoops! One must draw the line somewhere."

"I never could draw," returned Shelton, nettled and uneasy; "but I
understand--I 'll give him a hint to go."

"Don't," said Mr. Dennant, moving after his second ball, which Shelton
had smitten to the farther end, "be offended, my dear Shelton, and by no
means give him a hint; he interests me very much--a very clever, quiet
young fellow."

That this was not his private view Shelton inferred by studying Mr.
Dennant's manner in the presence of the vagabond. Underlying the
well-bred banter of the tranquil voice, the guarded quizzicality of his
pale brown face, it could be seen that Algernon Cuffe Dennant, Esq.,
J.P., accustomed to laugh at other people, suspected that he was being
laughed at. What more natural than that he should grope about to see how
this could be? A vagrant alien was making himself felt by an English
Justice of the Peace--no small tribute, this, to Ferrand's personality.
The latter would sit silent through a meal, and yet make his effect. He,
the object of their kindness, education, patronage, inspired their fear.
There was no longer any doubt; it was not of Ferrand that they were
afraid, but of what they did not understand in him; of horrid subtleties
meandering in the brain under that straight, wet-looking hair; of
something bizarre popping from the curving lips below that thin, lopsided
nose.

But to Shelton in this, as in all else, Antonia was what mattered. At
first, anxious to show her lover that she trusted him, she seemed never
tired of doing things for his young protege, as though she too had set
her heart on his salvation; but, watching her eyes when they rested on
the vagabond, Shelton was perpetually reminded of her saying on the first
day of his visit to Holm Oaks, "I suppose he 's really good--I mean all
these things you told me about were only...."

Curiosity never left her glance, nor did that story of his four days'
starving leave her mind; a sentimental picturesqueness clung about that
incident more valuable by far than this mere human being with whom she
had so strangely come in contact. She watched Ferrand, and Shelton
watched her. If he had been told that he was watching her, he would have
denied it in good faith; but he was bound to watch her, to find out with