ed silent.

"The first time you've received confidences--from married friends. Does
Nick suppose you've lived even to your tender age without... Hang it,
what's come over you, child?"

What had, indeed, that she could make clear to him? And yet more than
ever she felt the need of having him securely on her side. Once his word
was pledged, he was safe: otherwise there was no limit to his capacity
for wilful harmfulness.

"Look here, Streff, you and I know that Ellie hasn't been away for a
cure; and that if poor Clarissa was sworn to secrecy it was not because
it 'worries father' to think that mother needs to take care of her
health." She paused, hating herself for the ironic note she had tried to
sound.

"Well--?" he questioned, from the depths of the chair into which he had
sunk.

"Well, Nick doesn't... doesn't dream of it. If he knew that we owed our
summer here to... to my knowing...."

Strefford sat silent: she felt his astonished stare through the
darkness. "Jove!" he said at last, with a low whistle Susy bent over the
balustrade, her heart thumping against the stone rail.

"What was left of soul, I wonder--?" the young composer's voice shrilled
through the open windows.

Strefford sank into another silence, from which he roused himself only
as Susy turned back toward the lighted threshold.

"Well, my dear, we'll see it through between us; you and I-and
Clarissa," he said with his rasping laugh, rising to follow her. He
caught her hand and gave it a short pressure as they re-entered the
drawing-room, where Ellie was saying plaintively to Fred Gillow: "I can
never hear that thing sung without wanting to cry like a baby."

IX.

NELSON VANDERLYN, still in his travelling clothes, paused on the
threshold of his own dining-room and surveyed the scene with pardonable
satisfaction.

He was a short round man, with a grizzled head, small facetious eyes and
a large and credulous smile.

At the luncheon table sat his wife, between Charlie Strefford and Nick
Lansing. Next to Strefford, perched on her high chair, Clarissa throned
in infant beauty, while Susy Lansing cut up a peach for her. Through
wide orange awnings the sun slanted in upon the white-clad group.

"Well--well--well! So I've caught you at it!" cried the happy father,
whose inveterate habit it was to address his wife and friends as if he
had surprised them at an inopportune moment. Stealing up from behind, he
lifted his daughter into the air,