ter 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 what eyes she viewed this visitor who embodied all the rebellious
under-side of life, all that was absent in herself.

"Dick," she said to him one day, "you never talk to me of Monsieur
Ferrand."

"Do you want to talk of him?"

"Don't you think that he's improved?"

"He's fatter."

Antonia looked grave.

"No, but really?"

"I don't know," said Shelton; "I can't judge him."

Antonia turned her face away, and something in her attitude alarmed him.

"He was once a sort of gentleman," she said; "why shouldn't he become
one again?"

Sitting on the low wall of the kitchen-garden, her head was framed by
golden plums. The sun lay barred behind the foliage of the holm oak,
but a little patch filte