ltered. "Confidence!" he went on, with something like
a groan of anguish. "Why, I would rather lose the power of speech for
ever than befoul your ears with the record of my shame."

Her eyes, like twin pools of shining radiance, were searching his face.
"That is for me to judge," she said softly. "But I do not, on second
thoughts, ask you for your confidence, Mr. Chermside. I have faith in my
instinct. I do not believe that you have done anything really
base--whatever, perhaps, after sore temptation, you may have
contemplated. You would have stopped short when you realized that you
were on the brink of an evil deed. And--and if you hadn't stopped short
I--well, I, perhaps, should have tried to make allowances. So, if you
cannot give me your confidence, at least let me give you my help."

"Help?" came the man's sobbing cry, as the blood surged into his brain,
and all barriers of conscience, expedience, and common-sense were swept
away in a whirlpool of riotous passion--"it is your love I want, my
darling. The love of such as you means not only help but regeneration,
life itself, to such as I."

By the great laws that govern us, these things happen so, and the love
of Leslie Chermside and Violet Maynard had passed beyond the region of
words and of petty sophistries. They were locked in each other's arms,
eye to eye and lip to lip, at that moment of glad surrender in the
solitude of the rose garden--a solitude that was not entirely solitary.

For from behind the high box-hedge that hemmed them in, the French maid,
Louise Aubin, glided across the silent turf back to the house, her
piquant features contracted in a venomous frown. She had come out to
seek her young mistress on some trifling errand, but, having found her,
decided to retreat without fulfilling it.

CHAPTER XI

THE PEERING EYES

Rumour at Ottermouth had a trick of travelling as quickly as it does
through the bazaars of the East. When the French maid turned away from
the rose garden, after seeing Violet Maynard in Leslie Chermside's arms,
she was already aware of the proceedings at the inquest held earlier in
the afternoon. She knew, therefore, that the gentleman whose love affair
seemed to be prospering so gaily had been called as a witness, and had
owned to an acquaintance with her deceased admirer.

Now mademoiselle was an adept at swift deduction, and, putting two and
two together, she had arrived at the conclusion that this Mr. Chermside,
wh