m, and likely
enough at this moment the runners are ransacking the city hot-foot for
my lodgings."

"And you linger and show yourself here!--here of all places! O, it is
mad! Anne, why will you be so rash?"

"For the simple reason that I have been a fool, my dear. I banked the
balance of my money in George Street, and the bank is watched. I must
have money to win my way south. Therefore I must find you and reclaim
the notes you were kind enough to keep for me. I go to Swanston and find
you under surveillance of Chevenix, supported by an animal called
Towzer. I may have killed Towzer, by the way. If so, transported to an
equal sky, he may shortly have the faithful Chevenix to bear him
company. I grow tired of Chevenix."

But the fan dropped: her arms lay limp in her lap; and she was staring
up at me piteously, with a world of self-reproach in her beautiful eyes.

"And I locked up the notes at home to-night--when I dressed for the
ball--the first time they have left my heart! O, false!--false of trust
that I am!"

"Why, dearest, that is not fatal, I hope. You reach home to-night--you
slip them into some hiding--say in the corner of the wall below the
garden----"

"Stop: let me think." She picked up her fan again, and behind it her
eyes darkened while I watched and she considered. "You know the hill we
pass before we reach Swanston?--it has no name, I believe, but Ronald
and I have called it the Fish-back since we were children: it has a
clump of firs above it like a fin. There is a quarry on the east slope.
If you will be there at eight--I can manage it, I think, and bring the
money."

"But why should you run the risk?"

"Please, Anne--O, please, let me _do_ something! If you knew what it is
to sit at home while your--your dearest----"

"THE VISCOUNT OF SAINT-YVES!"

The name, shouted from the doorway, rang down her faltering sentence as
with the clash of an alarm bell. I saw Ronald--in talk with Miss McBean
but a few yards away--spin round on his heel and turn slowly back on me
with a face of sheer bewilderment. There was no time to conceal myself.
To reach either the tea-room or the card-room, I must traverse twelve
feet of open floor. We sat in clear view of the main entrance; and there
already, with eye-glass lifted, raffish, flamboyant, exuding pomades and
bad style, stood my detestable cousin. He saw us at once; wheeled
right-about-face and spoke to some one in the vestibule; wheeled round
again, and b