ff hastily for her goloshes, while he looked fondly after her. At the
turn of the stair she glanced back, and his eyes were still begging
her to hurry. It was a gracious memory to her in the after years, for
she never saw him again.

As soon as she was gone he returned to the hall, and taking from a peg
a cloak with a Mother Goose hood, brought it to Lady Pippinworth, who
had watched her mamma trip upstairs.

"Did I say I was going out?" she asked.

"Yes," said Tommy, and she rose to let him put the elegant thing round
her. She was one of those dangerous women who look their best when you
are helping them to put on their cloaks.

"Now," he instructed her, "pull the hood over your head."

"Is it so cold as that?" she said, obeying.

"I want you to wear it," he answered. What he meant was that she never
looked quite so impudent as in her hood, and his vanity insisted that
she should be armed to the teeth before they resumed hostilities. The
red light was in his eyes as he drew her into the garden where Grizel
lay.

CHAPTER XXIX

THE RED LIGHT

It was an evening without stars, but fair, sufficient wind to make her
Ladyship cling haughtily to his arm as they turned corners. Many of
the visitors were in the garden, some grouped round a quartet of gaily
attired minstrels, but more sitting in little arbours or prowling in
search of an arbour to sit in; the night was so dark that when our two
passed beyond the light of the hotel windows they could scarce see the
shrubs they brushed against; cigars without faces behind them
sauntered past; several times they thought they had found an
unoccupied arbour at last, when they heard the clink of coffee-cups.

"I believe the castle dates from the fifteenth century," Tommy would
then say suddenly, though it was not of castles he had been talking.

With a certain satisfaction he noticed that she permitted him, without
comment, to bring in the castle thus and to drop it the moment the
emergency had passed. But he had little other encouragement. Even when
she pressed his arm it was only as an intimation that the castle was
needed.

"I can't even make her angry," he said wrathfully to himself.

"You answer not a word," he said in great dejection to her.

"I am afraid to speak," she admitted. "I don't know who may hear."

"Alice," he said eagerly, "what would you say if you were not afraid
to speak?"

They had stopped, and he thought she trembled a little on his ar