is uncurtained, I'll take it as a good omen," he said.

Noiselessly his feet trod the short, wet grass, going nearer to the
shadowed loggia to make sure....

The curtains were drawn closely, and the window was shut.

CHAPTER XXII

DESTINY AND THE WALDOS

After the cablegram came, calling them to America, it took the Nelson
Smiths an incredibly short time to wind up their affairs and to break
the ties--many and intricate as the clinging tendrils of a vine--which
attached them to England.

Of course, as their friends pointed out, it wasn't as if they had
had a home of their own. Luckily for them--unluckily for the
Annesley-Setons--they had taken the Portman Square house only month
by month. And in Devonshire they had been but paying--dearly
paying!--guests, as the world surmised.

Everyone protested that they would be dreadfully missed, and begged to
know their plans, and whether Mr. Nelson Smith's business on the other
side (something to do with mines, wasn't it?) would not be finished, so
that they might come back in time for Henley and Cowes?

But the American millionaire's answers were vague. He couldn't tell. He
could only hope. And his manner, unflatteringly, was indifferent. It was
Mrs. Nelson Smith who seemed depressed; "a changed girl," Constance said,
"from the moment that cable message arrived at Valley House."

Connie thought, and mentioned her thought to others: very likely the
truth was that Nelson Smith had lost money. In contradiction to this
theory he was known to have given generously to charities just before
starting; not those queer, new-fangled societies he had tried to bolster
up while he was in London, but hospitals and orphan asylums, and
organizations of that sort which opened their mouths wide.

Still, nobody could say for a certainty how much he gave, and it was
argued that Lady Annesley-Seton was sure to know more than most people
about Nelson Smith's private affairs. The story of possible money losses
ran about and grew rapidly, healing regrets for his absence. Soon the
pair dropped out of their late friends' conversation as a subject of
living interest.

It was much the same with the Countess de Santiago. Whether her plans
were affected by those of the Nelson Smiths, nobody knew; and she said
that they were not. But about the time that their departure for America
was decided upon, Madalena had a sharp illness. It was, she wrote
Constance (who made inquiries, fearing somet