ve learned nothing of it in the
convent where she had been educated. So, if she knew anything, she must
have known it before she went there, which was impossible. She knew
nothing, therefore, and yet she was not a child. As a matter of fact,
she was the most beautiful woman Loo Barebone had ever seen. He was
thinking that as she sat on the low wall, swinging one slipper half
falling from her foot, watching the sunset, while he watched her and
noted the anger slowly dying from her eyes as the light faded from the
sky. That strange anger went down, it would appear, with the sun.
After the long silence--when the low bars of red cloud lying across the
western sky were fading from pink to grey--she spoke at last in a voice
which he had never heard before, gentle and confidential.

"When are you going away?" she asked.

"To-night."

And he knew that the very hour of his departure was known to her
already.

"And when will you come back?"

"As soon as I can," he answered, half-involuntarily. There was a turn of
the head half toward him, something expectant in the tilt at the corner
of her parted lips, which made it practically impossible to make any
other answer.

"Why?" she asked, in little more than a whisper--then she broke into a
gay laugh and leapt off the wall. She walked quickly past him.

"Why?" she repeated over her shoulder as she passed him. And he was
too quick for her, for he caught her hand and touched it with his lips
before she jerked it away from him.

"Because you are here," he answered, with a laugh. But she was grave
again and looked at him with a queer searching glance before she turned
away and left him standing in the half-light--thinking of Miriam Liston.

CHAPTER XX. "NINETEEN"

As Juliette returned to the Gate House she encountered her father,
walking arm-in-arm with Dormer Colville. The presence of the Englishman
within the enceinte of the chateau was probably no surprise to her, for
she must have heard the clang of the bell just within the gate, which
could not be opened from outside; by which alone access was gained to
any part of the chateau.

Colville was in riding costume. It was, indeed, his habitual dress when
living in France, for he made no concealment of his partnership in a
well-known business house in Bordeaux.

"I am a sleeping partner," he would say, with that easy flow of
egotistic confidence which is the surest way of learning somewhat of
your neighbour's privat