mined to act at once. The "boy" was already
retreating, a tray in his hand.

"Dja keno," Tancred called.

On shipboard he had not been altogether idle. The Malay tongue is as
easy to speak badly as Italian, and Tancred had found slight difficulty
in acquiring enough mouthfuls for ordinary needs. "Dja keno--come here."
The sultry savage wheeled and obeyed.

"Ba gnio inong--take this to the lady." And as Tancred spoke he pointed
through the lattice to Mrs. Lyeth.

The Malay took the note and bowed.

"Bae, Tuan," he answered. "Your lordship, it is well."

In a moment the man had gone, and in another moment Tancred saw him
approach Mrs. Lyeth and place the letter in her hand. He could see that
she was eying it, wonderingly no doubt, for now she turned her head, but
already the Malay had disappeared. And as she still looked about her,
holding the letter unopened before her, Tancred felt as though something
were clutching at his throat. From out the coppice, not a dozen yards
distant, the general had suddenly emerged.

In a state similar to that mental paralysis which visits us in dream,
Tancred marked his advance. It seemed perfectly natural that he should
be there; without an effort he recalled the fact, forgotten albeit until
now, yet still the unaccountable fact that it was Sunday; and presently,
as the general halted, his thin figure erect, a bamboo switch in his
hand, his cavalry moustache more bristling than ever, and
proprietor-fashion surveyed the grounds, it was to Tancred as though he
had been there for all of time. Then at once the cerebral swoon
departed, in a confusion of visions, with that thing still clutching at
his throat and his heart beating like mad, he saw on one side Mrs. Lyeth
open the letter, and on the other the general decapitate a poppy with
his switch.

Already Mrs. Lyeth had turned the initial page; she had read the second
and was beginning at the last, when the general, to whose presence
behind her she was obviously oblivious, advanced on tiptoe to where she
sat. Tancred saw him raise a warning finger to his lips, beneath the
moustache he divined a smile, invisible to him, yet apparent, doubtless,
to Liance, at whom the warning gesture must have been made, and then,
bending over his _fiancee's_ shoulder, he peered at the letter which
she held. Yet before he could have deciphered so much as a line of it,
Mrs. Lyeth started, as we all do when taken unaware. In an instant,
however, she re