e.'

"Then Ricky cabled me that she was coming home. I walked out of school
the same morning. I didn't even tell anyone where I was going. Because I
had money enough, I thought I would fly. And that, dear lady, is the end
of this very sad tale." He grinned one-sidedly down at her.

"It was then that--that--"

"I was smashed up? Yes. And Rupert came home without warning to find
things very messy. I was in the hospital when I should have been in some
corrective institution, as Aunt Rogers so often told me during those
days. Ricky was also in disgrace for speaking her mind, as she does now
and then. To make it even more interesting, our guardian had been
amusing himself by buying oil stock with our capital. Unfortunately, oil
did not exist in the wells we owned. Yes, Rupert had every right to be
anything but pleased with the affairs of the Ralestones.

"He swept us off here where we are still under observation, I believe."

"Then you don't like it here?"

"Like it? Madam, 'like' is a very pallid word. What if you were offered
everything you ever wished for, all tied up in pink ribbons and laid on
your door-step? What would your reaction be?"

"So," she was staring into the fire, "that's the way of it?"

"Yes. Or it would be if--" He stooped to reach for another piece of
wood. The fire was threatening to die again.

"What is the flaw in the masterpiece?" she asked quietly.

"Rupert. He's changed. In the old days he was one of us; now he's a
stranger. We're amusing to have around, someone to look after, but I
have a feeling that to him we don't really exist. We aren't real--" Val
floundered trying to express that strange, walled-off emotion which so
often held him in this grown-up brother's presence. "Things like this
'Bluebeard's Chamber' of his--that isn't like the Rupert we knew."

"Did you ever think that he might be shy, too?" she asked. "He left two
children and came home to find two distrustful adults. Give him his
chance--"

"Charity!" Ricky ran lightly downstairs. "Why didn't Val tell me you had
come?"

"I just dropped in to inquire concerning your patient."

"He's better-tempered than Val," declared Ricky shamelessly. "You'll
stay to dinner of course. We're having some sort of crab dish that Lucy
seems to think her best effort. Rupert will be back by then, I'm sure;
he's out somewhere with Sam. There's been some trouble about trespassers
on the swamp lands. Goodness, won't this rain ever stop?"

A