You came?"

"Yes, and I went farther than you have gone, because I thought it was
play, comedy, fun. I even sat upon your gallery, just outside the
billiard-room--and smoked two cigarettes. You'll find the stubs on the
porch railing if her ladyship's servants are not too exemplary." She
was looking at him in wide-eyed unbelief. "I was there when you came
out on the lawn with the Frenchman."

"Did you hear what he was--what we were saying?" she asked, nervously
and going pale.

"No. I was not eavesdropping. Besides, you returned to the house very
abruptly, if you remember."

"Yes, I remember," she said, a sigh of relief accompanying the warm
glow that came to her cheek. "But were you not afraid of being
discovered? How imprudent of you!"

"It was a bit risky, but I rather enjoyed it. The count spoke to me as
I left the place. It was dark and he mistook me for one of your party.
I couldn't wait to see if you returned to renew the tete-a-tete--"

"I did not return," she said. It was his turn to be relieved.

CHAPTER IV

IN WHICH THE TRUTH TRESPASSES

Lord and Lady Bazelhurst, with the more energetic members of their
party, spent the day in a so-called hunting excursion to the hills
south of the Villa. Toward nightfall they returned successfully
empty-handed and rapacious for bridge. Penelope, full of smouldering
anger, had spent the afternoon in her room, disdaining every call of
sociability. She had awakened to the truth of the situation in so far
as she was concerned. She was at least seeing things from Shaw's point
of view. Her resentment was not against the policy of her brother, but
the overbearing, petulant tyranny of her American sister-in-law. From
the beginning she had disliked Evelyn; now she despised her. With the
loyal simplicity of a sister she absolved Cecil of all real blame in
the outrage of the morning, attributing everything to the cruelty and
envy of the despot who held the purse-strings from which dangled
the pliable fortunes of Bazelhurst. The Bazelhursts, one and
all--ancestors thrown in--swung back and forth on the pendulum of her
capriciousness. Penelope, poor as a church mouse, was almost wholly
dependent upon her brother, who in turn owed his present affluence to
the more or less luckless movement of the matrimonial market. The girl
had a small, inadequate income--so small it was almost worth jesting
about.

Here was Penelope, twenty-two, beautiful, proud, fair-minded, and
he