a vexed note in his voice. Yet she persisted.

"What was she like? Wasn't she very grateful?"

"I don't know at all. I don't suppose she enjoyed the situation any more
than I did."

He plucked a tuft of moss and tossed it from him, as if therewith
dismissing the subject. And Priscilla felt a little hurt, though not for
worlds would she have suffered him to see it.

It fell to him to break the silence a few seconds later, and he did so
without a hint of difficulty.

"When am I going to see the crypt?"

Priscilla laughed a little.

"Are you writing a book about the place?"

He laughed back at her quite openly.

"Not at present. When I do, it will be a romance, with you for heroine."

"Oh, no; not me!" she protested. "I am a mere nobody. Lady Priscilla
ought to be your heroine."

He raised his eyebrows. She had begun to associate that look of his with
protest rather than surprise.

"I have yet to be introduced to Lady Priscilla," he said. "And as she
doesn't like men, I almost think I shall forego the pleasure and keep
out of her way."

"Perhaps I have given you a wrong impression about her," Priscilla said,
speaking with a slight effort. "It is only the idle, foppish men about
town she has no use for."

"She is fastidious, apparently," he returned, lying down abruptly at her
feet.

"Don't you like women to be fastidious?" Priscilla demanded boldly.

He lay quite motionless for several seconds, then turned in a leisurely
fashion upon his side to survey her.

"You are fastidious?" he asked.

"Of course I am!" Priscilla's words came rather breathlessly. "Don't you
think me so?"

Again he was silent for seconds. Then, in a baffling drawl, his answer
came:

"If you will allow me to say so, I think you are just the sweetest woman
I ever met."

Priscilla met his eyes for a single instant, and looked away. She was
burning and throbbing from head to foot. She could find naught to say in
answer; no word wherewith to turn his deliberate sentence into a jest.
Perhaps in her secret heart she did not desire to do so, for a voice
within her, a voice long stifled, cried out that she had met her mate.
And, since surrender was inevitable, why should she seek to delay it?

But Carfax said no more. Possibly he thought he had said too much. At
least, after a long, quiet pause, he looked away from her; and the spell
that bound her passed.

V

THE OPENING GATES

That evening Priscilla found a letter fr