inite."

"Why should I think so? Do YOU?"

"I don't know. I want to find out."

She laughed at his obstinate insistence. "To test my veracity, I
suppose?" At the sound of a step in the gallery she added: "Here he
is--you can ask him yourself."

She met Darrow's knock with an invitation to enter, and he came into the
room and paused between herself and Owen. She was struck, as he stood
there, by the contrast between his happy careless good-looks and her
step-son's frowning agitation.

Darrow met her eyes with a smile. "Am I too soon? Or is our walk given
up?"

"No; I was just going to get ready." She continued to linger between
the two, looking slowly from one to the other. "But there's something we
want to tell you first: Owen is engaged to Miss Viner."

The sense of an indefinable interrogation in Owen's mind made her, as
she spoke, fix her eyes steadily on Darrow.

He had paused just opposite the window, so that, even in the rainy
afternoon light, his face was clearly open to her scrutiny. For a
second, immense surprise was alone visible on it: so visible that
she half turned to her step-son, with a faint smile for his refuted
suspicions. Why, she wondered, should Owen have thought that Darrow had
already guessed his secret, and what, after all, could be so disturbing
to him in this not improbable contingency? At any rate, his doubt
must have been dispelled: there was nothing feigned about Darrow's
astonishment. When her eyes turned back to him he was already crossing
to Owen with outstretched hand, and she had, through an unaccountable
faint flutter of misgiving, a mere confused sense of their exchanging
the customary phrases. Her next perception was of Owen's tranquillized
look, and of his smiling return of Darrow's congratulatory grasp. She
had the eerie feeling of having been overswept by a shadow which there
had been no cloud to cast...

A moment later Owen had left the room and she and Darrow were alone. He
had turned away to the window and stood staring out into the down-pour.

"You're surprised at Owen's news?" she asked.

"Yes: I am surprised," he answered.

"You hadn't thought of its being Miss Viner?"

"Why should I have thought of Miss Viner?"

"You see now why I wanted so much to find out what you knew about her."
He made no comment, and she pursued: "Now that you DO know it's she, if
there's anything----"

He moved back into the room and went up to her. His face was serious,
with a sl