aid, quietly; "but _you will_!"

"I?" Gila turned a glance of contemptuous amusement upon him. "Some
chance! And I warn you that if you attempt to tattle anything about it I
will turn, the tables against you in a way you little suspect."

"Gila, you will tell Lew Tennelly _everything_, or you will never marry
him! It is his right to know! And now, sir"--Courtland turned to
Aquilar, lounging amusedly against the doorway--"if you will step
outside I will _settle with you_!"

But suddenly Gila gave a scream and covered her face with her hands, for
there, just behind Aquilar, stood Tennelly, looking like a ghost. He had
heard it all!

CHAPTER XXXI

Tennelly stepped within the room, gave one keen, questioning look at
Aquilar as he passed him, searching straight into the depths of his
startled, shifty eyes, and came and stood before the crouching girl. She
had dropped into a chair and was sobbing as if her heart would break.

"What does this mean, Gila?"

Tennelly's voice was cold and stern.

Courtland looked at his shocked face and turned away from the pain of
it. But when he looked for the man who had wrought this havoc he had
suddenly melted from the room! The front door was blowing back and forth
in the wind, and the clerk and bell-boy stood, open-mouthed, staring.
Courtland closed the door of the reception-room and hurried out on the
veranda, but saw no sign of any one in the wind-swept darkness. The moon
had risen enough to make a bright path over the sea, but the earth as
yet was wrapped in shadow.

Down in the field, beyond the outbuildings, he heard a whirring sound,
and as he looked a dark thing rose like a great bird high above his
head. The bird had flown while the flying was good. The lady might face
her difficulties alone!

Courtland stood below in the courtyard, while the moon arose and shed
its light through the sky, and the great black bird executed an
evolution or two and whirred off to the north, doubtless headed for
Seattle or some equally inaccessible point. A great helpless wrath was
upon him. Dolt that he had been to let this human leper escape from him
into the world again! A kind of divine frenzy seized him to capture him
yet and put him where he could work no further harm to other willing
victims. Yes, he thought of Gila as a willing victim! An hour before he
would have called her just plain innocent victim. Now something in her
face, her attitude, as she saw him and walked away w