he said.
Silly, perhaps, but----" His thoughts went on and on, always returning
to the Medici boots, in spite of himself.

* * * * *

Eric came back from his ride at eleven o'clock, with as troubled a
mind as when he began it. He almost feared to see Suzanne at lunch.

When he did meet her with John and Mr. Erskine on the cool, shaded
porch where they lunched, he saw there was nothing to fear. The
amorous, clinging woman of the hour before dawn was not there at all.
There was only the Suzanne whom Eric knew and loved as a sister.

Here, again, was their merry little Suzanne, somewhat spoiled by her
husband, it is true, but a Suzanne sweetly feminine, almost childish
in a crisp, white frock and little, low-heeled sandals. Their talk was
lazily pleasant--of tennis honors and horses, of the prize delphiniums
in the garden, of the tiny maltese kitten which Suzanne had brought up
from the stables late that morning and installed in a pink-bowed
basket on the porch. She showed the kitten to Eric, handling its tiny
paws gently, hushing its plaintive mews with ridiculous pet names.

"Perhaps I'm a bigger fool than I know. Perhaps it never happened,
except in a dream," Eric told himself, unhappily. "And yet----"

He looked at the red marks on his hand, marks made by a furious
Suzanne in that hour before the dawn. Too, he remembered the cut on
John's wrist, the cut so near the vein.

Eric declined John's invitation to go through the museum with him that
afternoon, but he said with a queer sense of diffidence, "While
you're there, John, you'd better get rid of the Medici boots. Creepy
things to have around, I think."

"They'll be destroyed, all right. But Suzanne is just bound to try
them on. I'll get them, though, and do as Uncle said."

Eric remained on the terrace, speculating somewhat on just what John
and Suzanne would do, now that the huge fortune of Silas Dickerson was
theirs. Eric was not envious of his brother's good luck, and he was
thankful for his share in old Silas' generosity.

At five o'clock he entered the hall, just as Suzanne hurried in from
the kitchen. She spread our her hands, laughingly.

"With my own fair hands I've made individual almond tortonis for
dessert. Cook thinks I'm a wonder! Each masterpiece in a fluted silver
dish, silver candies sprinkled on the pink whipped cream! O-oh!"

She made big eyes in mock gluttony. Eric forgot, for a moment, that
there ever