t. A moment later
Chauvenet, who had waited impatiently, joined her, and they rode down
together. She referred at once to the affair with the mountaineer in her
most frivolous key.

"They are an odd and suspicious people, but they're as loyal as the
stars. And please let us never mention the matter again--not to any one,
if you please, Monsieur!"

CHAPTER XVI

NARROW MARGINS

The black-caps pipe among the reeds,
And there'll be rain to follow;
There is a murmur as of wind
In every coign and hollow;
The wrens do chatter of their fears
While swinging on the barley-ears.

--Amelie Rives.

The Judge and Mrs. Claiborne were dining with some old friends in the
valley, and Shirley, left alone, carried to the table several letters
that had come in the late mail. The events of the afternoon filled her
mind, and she was not sorry to be alone. It occurred to her that she was
building up a formidable tower of strange secrets, and she wondered
whether, having begun by keeping her own counsel as to the attempts she
had witnessed against John Armitage's life, she ought now to unfold all
she knew to her father or to Dick. In the twentieth century homicide was
not a common practice among men she knew or was likely to know; and the
feeling of culpability for her silence crossed lances with a deepening
sympathy for Armitage. She had learned where he was hiding, and she
smiled at the recollection of the trifling bit of strategy she had
practised upon Chauvenet.

The maid who served Shirley noted with surprise the long pauses in which
her young mistress sat staring across the table lost in reverie. A pretty
picture was Shirley in these intervals: one hand raised to her cheek,
bright from the sting of the spring wind in the hills. Her forearm, white
and firm and strong, was circled by a band of Roman gold, the only
ornament she wore, and when she lifted her hand with its quick deft
gesture, the trinket flashed away from her wrist and clasped the warm
flesh as though in joy of the closer intimacy. Her hair was swept up high
from her brow; her nose, straight, like her father's, was saved from
arrogance by a sensitive mouth, all eloquent of kindness and wholesome
mirth--but we take unfair advantage! A girl dining in candle-light with
only her dreams for company should be safe from impertinent eyes.

She had kept Dick's letter till the last. He wrote often and in the key
of his talk. She dropped a lump of sugar into her