g slowly in front of the
house, spoke to him abruptly.

"If I wait here shall I see the Governor come out?"

With the feeling that he was passing again through a familiar nightmare,
he turned quickly and looked down on the pathetic figure he had seen the
evening before. In the daylight she seemed more pitiable and less
repellent than she had appeared in the darkness. The hollowness of her
features gave a certain dignity to her expression--the look of one who
is returning from the shadows of death. Years ago, before illness or
dissipation had wrecked her health and her appearance, she may have been
attractive, he surmised, in a common and obvious fashion. Her black eyes
were still striking, and the sunlight revealed a quantity of coarse
black hair on which he detected the claret tinge of fading dye.

"I am sorry," she added as she recognized him. "I did not know it was
you." As soon as she had spoken she became confused and tried to pass
on; but he made a movement to detain her.

"Have you any particular reason for wishing to see the Governor?"

"Oh, no, I am a stranger here." Her accents were ordinary, yet there was
a note of the unusual in her appearance and manner. Whatever she was,
she was not commonplace.

"But you were waiting to see him?" he said.

Her gaze left his face and travelled uncertainly over the mansion. "Oh,
yes, I thought I might see him. I've never seen a Governor."

"You do not wish to speak to him?"

"No; why should I wish to speak to him? I'm a stranger, that's all. I
like to see whatever is going on. Was that his daughter who went out
just now?"

"Yes, that was his daughter."

"Then she is pretty--almost as pretty as--Thank you, sir. I will go
along now. I'm staying not far from here, and I come out when I get the
chance to watch the squirrels in the Square."

The explanation sounded simple enough; yet he suspected, though he could
not have defined his reason, that she was not telling the truth. Again
he asked himself if she could have known Gideon Vetch in the past? It
was possible; it was not even improbable. Once, even ten or fifteen
years ago, she may have been handsome in her coarse and showy style; and
he had no proof, except Patty, that the Governor had ever possessed a
fastidious taste.

The woman had turned with furtive haste in the direction of the outer
gate; and when Stephen started on again toward the library, he crossed a
man who was rapidly ascending the brick walk f