aught Lyttleton's wrists and forced them down.
"Don't be an idiot--as well as a cad. Do you want to rouse the
household? If you do, and get kicked out, you'll never get another
chance on this island, my friend."

"Damn your impudence!" Lyttleton stuttered, sufficiently recalled to
his senses to guard his tone, and wrenched at his wrists. "Let me go!
I'll--"

"Sure I'll let you go," Trego agreed cheerfully. "But unless you want
a thrashing in the presence of a lady, you'll do nothing foolish."

With this he released Mr. Lyttleton in such wise that he was an
instant later picking himself up from the gravel path.

And while he was picking himself up he was also reflecting swiftly,
this notwithstanding that Sally was no longer present to be a stay
upon their brawling.

If his look was vicious, his tone was subdued as he stood brushing off
the dust of his downfall.

"Lucky you came when you did," he said, with an effort to seem
composed. "I presume I ought to thank you for knocking me about. This
confounded temper of mine will get me into serious trouble yet if I'm
not careful. I was driven pretty nearly wild by that little devil--"

"Cut it right there!" Trego interrupted sharply. "I don't know
anything about your row--didn't hear a word that passed between you
two--and it's none of my business. But if there's any blame to be
borne, you'd better shoulder it yourself, for I warn you, I'm not
going to hear any woman called names by a pup like you!"

CHAPTER X

LEGERDEMAIN

With a mind half distracted, the battlefield of a dozen unhappy
emotions of which the most coherent were seething self-reproach and
frantic irritation with Trego (why must it have been he, of all men?)
Sally inconsiderately left the two to conclude their quarrel without
an audience--took to her heels incontinently and sped like a hunted
shadow across the open lawn. She flung through the side door and left
it wide, stumbled blindly up-stairs to her bedchamber door, and shut
this last behind her with no anticipation so fond as that of solitude
and freedom to cry her eyes out.

But she had no more than turned from the door toward her bed, in the
same movement shrugging off her black cloak and letting it fall
regardless to the floor, when she became aware that solitude was no
more in that room, that she shared it with an alien Presence--a shape
of misty pallor, filling the armchair, silhouetted vaguely against the
moonlight rectangle of the w