e there seemed
just a shade of nervousness and a certain repressed energy in her
manner.

Miss Ross had led me, with little ceremony, into the rear room, and
she lost no time, once we were seated.

'I don't know what thee may have on thy mind this evening,' she began,
'but whatever it is, I will not detain thee long. Monsieur Voisin has
been here. He left, indeed, less than an hour ago. I have had a talk
with June since, and she has allowed me to tell you of his call. The
man came here between four and five o'clock.'

In spite of myself I started. He had left the grounds with a bleeding
face, little more than an hour earlier.

'He was pale, and at one side of his face was a small wound, neatly
dressed, and covered with a small strip of surgeon's plaster. He was
labouring, evidently, under some strong mental strain, and I was not
much surprised when he asked June for a private interview, and in such
a supplicating manner that she could hardly refuse. Of course he
proposed to her; and in a fashion that surprised her; his pleading was
so desperate, his manner so almost fierce. He begged her to take time;
he implored her to reconsider; and he went away at last like a man
utterly desperate. At the last he forgot himself and charged her with
caring for an adventurer; a penniless fortune-hunter who might forsake
her at any moment; and then he recounted word for word the things said
in that conservatory episode; the things that were imparted to Mr.
Lossing.'

'The scoundrel!'

'Even so. This was too much for June's temper. She ordered him out of
her presence, and in going he uttered some strange words, the purport
of them being that before leaving this place she might find that Mr.
Lossing had vanished out of her life and gone back to a more congenial
career, and that she might be glad to turn to him to beg such favours
as no other man could grant, and he ended by saying that had she put
him in the place of friend and confidant rather than you, he might
have made straight the crooked places that were troubling the peace of
herself and some of her friends.'

I was fairly aglow with excitement when she paused, and I told her at
once my story of the day's happenings.

'Tell Miss Jenrys,' I said, 'that I can, at the right time, explain
all the riddles he has astonished her with, and ask her to be patient
yet a little longer.'

And then I went back to the others, to tell Mr. Trent and Hilda O'Neil
that I had now traced