ering. "My felicitations! And e'en
though I know not your identity, still I may sense your fond confusion.
And yet--why blush, dear unknowns? 'Tis in the air to-night. Even I
myself have yielded to spirit of frivolity. Two hours ago I appeared
masked in these dingy vestments as Love's Young Dream; but with me the
mood has passed. Fellow romancers, you have witnessed a metamorphosis;
you are now gazing upon the Wrath of God, about to thunder forth upon a
coal black charger. I merely paused to bid you haste inside, lest you
miss the crux of the evening. When I withdrew the Honorable Archie was
already searching, with bravely concealed distraction, for the fair
daughter of the house. The hour has struck--it's masks off--masks off,
from eyes and hearts!"

[Illustration: "Blessings, my children!" he called to the two in the
shadow. "My felicitations! And e'en though I know not your identity,
still I may sense your fond confusion."]

He laughed again, a low and ugly chuckle. Sparks flew from Ragtime's
hoofs when he touched the sleek flanks with his heels and the splendid
animal quivered and bunched hard thigh muscles and spurned the gravel.
White face whiter still against the background of his somber vestments,
debonaire and drunkenly insecure in the saddle, Garret Devereau tore
out into the main road and thundered off into the night.

Barbara Allison stood a long time motionless, her back to the
motionless man so near her. She stood and stared, pale as had been
that black-robed horseman, straight ahead of her. Then a tremor shook
her. Mechanically she started forward, but at the first step Steve's
hand reached out and found her arm and drew her back to him. She faced
about, and waited.

"Is that--true?" he asked her, quietly.

She made no move to answer.

"Is that true?" his low and gentle voice commanded this time. "You
still mean to--marry--him?"

She recovered her voice then. All her confusion and stunned
realization was swallowed up by that tide of fiercely unreasoning,
deadly resentment which his very gentleness evoked. There was nothing
girlish in his reply--nothing boyish in that high-held chin and
stiffened body. A hard note marred her utterance, a perfection of
insolence edged with scorn, which Steve's world did not know. She
wanted but one thing in that moment; she knew but one impulse--a mad
desire to cut and tear and rend savagely his gravely possessed
kindliness.

"What I have don