do with my loss? Do you think I care
whether Mrs. Eustace heard what I told her husband? I'd say it to her
face if she likes, just as I said it to his. I told him he ought to be
arrested, and I say so to you. I'd arrest him and his wife and his
assistant and his servant--everyone in the place if I had my way."

He was watching the light flashing in her eyes, watching and admiring.
The full rich tones of her voice vibrated with the heat of her words,
her bosom rose and fell as in her indignation wave after wave of
expression swept across her face, each one intensifying the charm she
had for him.

"I suppose you include me in your list of suspects," she blurted out as
he did not speak. "Why don't you say so at once? Your questions
certainly suggest it."

"Do they?" he asked, with a smile which irritated her.

"Yes, they do. What else do they suggest? It would be quite in keeping
with the rest of the business--you riding out here to ask me pointless
questions while the people most likely to have been concerned in the
robbery are left alone. They are known, I suppose you will say, where I
am a stranger, someone you have never seen before----"

"You are wrong," he interrupted, still smiling; "I have seen you
before."

Her eyes concentrated on his with keen intensity.

"When? Where?" she asked sharply.

"We were fellow-passengers by a coach four or five months back. You have
forgotten me, but I"--now that the personal note had been struck, the
note he wished so much to sound and yet shrank from, he was almost
carried away by it; by an effort he checked himself, and instead of
telling her all that the meeting had meant for him, he added, "I rarely
forget a face when I have once seen it."

She flashed a swift glance at him, reading in his eyes, in his face, in
his attitude, the confirmation of what she knew from the tone of his
voice.

"But you--you do not--remember me," he said slowly as she did not
reply. He saw the glance, saw the fleeting questioning light in her
eyes, and with the fatuity bred of love-blindness, misread it.

"I do remember--distinctly," she answered softly. "I recognised you as
you came on to the verandah. I thought it was you who had forgotten--or
did not wish to remember."

As she spoke the last words softly, demurely, she raised her eyes to his
and looked steadily at him with no sign on her face of her recent
indignation.

"I not wish to remember? I not wish to remember you?" he exclai