The Hollow of Her Hand

  CHAPTER X

  THE GHOST AT THE FEAST

  The next day he appeared bright and early with his copy of theStudio.

  "There," he said, holding it before her eyes. She took it from hishands and stared long and earnestly at the reproduction.

  "Do you think it like me?" she inquired innocently.

  "Amazingly like you," he declared with conviction.

  She turned the page. He was watching her closely. As she looked uponthe sketches of the half-nude figure a warm blush covered her faceand neck. She did not speak for a full minute, and he was positivethat her fingers tightened their grasp on the magazine.

  "The same model," he said quietly.

  She nodded her head.

  "Hetty Glynn, I am sure," she said, after a pause, without liftingher eyes. Her voice was low, the words not very distinct.

  He drew a long breath, and she looked up quickly. What he saw inher honest blue eyes convicted her.

  Sara Wrandall came into the room at that moment. Hetty hastilyclosed the magazine and held it behind her. Booth had intended toshow the reproduction to Mrs. Wrandall, but the girl's behaviourcaused him to change his mind. He felt that he possessed a secretthat could not be shared with Sara Wrandall, then or afterward.Moreover, he decided that he would not refer to the Hawkrightpicture again unless the girl herself brought up the subject. Allthis flashed through his mind as he stepped forward to greet thenewcomer.

  When he turned again to Hetty, the magazine had disappeared. Henever saw it afterward, and, what is more to the point, he neverasked her to produce it.

  There was a marked change in Hetty's manner after that when theywere left alone together. She seemed inert, distrait and at timesalmost unfriendly. There were occasions, however, when she went tothe other extreme in trying to be at ease with him. These transitionswere singularly marked. He could not fail to notice them. As forhimself, he was uncomfortable, ill-at-ease. An obvious barrier hadsprung up between them.

  When Sara was present, the girl seemed to be her old self, but atno other time. Frequently during the sittings of the next few dayshe caught her looking at him without apparently being aware of theintensity of her gaze. He had the feeling that she was trying toread his thoughts, but what impressed him more than anything elsewas the increasing look of wonder and appeal that lurked in herdeep, questioning eyes. It seemed almost as if she were pleadingfor mercy with them.

  He thought hard over the situation. The obvious solution came tohim: she had been at one time reduced to the necessity of posing,a circumstance evidently known to but few and least of all to SaraWrandall, from whom the girl plainly meant to keep the truth. Thisconviction distressed him, but not in the way that might have beenexpected. He had no scruples about sharing the secret or in keepingit inviolate; his real distress lay in the fear that Mrs. Wrandallmight hear of all this from other and perhaps ungentle sources. Asfor her posing for Hawkright, it meant little or nothing to him. Inhis own experience, two girls of gentle birth had served as modelsfor pictures of his own making, and he fully appreciated the exigenciesthat had driven them to it. One had posed in the "altogether." Shewas a girl of absolutely irreproachable character, who afterwardsmarried a chap he knew very well, and who was fully aware ofthat short phase in her life. That feature of the situation meantnothing to him. He was in no doubt concerning Hetty. She was whatshe appeared to be: a gentlewoman.

  He began to experience a queer sense of pity for her. Her eyeshaunted him when they were separated; they dogged him when theywere together. More than once he was moved to rush over and takeher in his arms, and implore her to tell him all, to trust him witheverything. At such times the thought of holding the slim, warm,ineffably feminine body in his arms was most distracting. He ratherfeared for himself. If such a thing were to happen,--and it mighthappen if the impulse seized him at the psychological moment ofleast resistance,--the result in all probability would be disastrous.She would turn on him like an injured animal and rend him! Alas,for that leveller called reason! It spoils many good intentions.

  He admitted to himself that he was under the spell of her. It wasnot love, he was able to contend; but it was a mysterious appealto something within him that had never revealed itself before. Hecouldn't quite explain what it was.

  In his solitary hours at the cottage on the upper road, he was wontto take his friend Leslie Wrandall into consideration. As a friend,was it not his duty to go to him with his sordid little tale? Wasit right to let Wrandall go on with his wooing when there existedthat which might make all the difference in the world to him? Heinvariably brought these deliberations to a close by relaxing intoa grim smile of amusement, as much as to say: "Serve him right,anyway. Trust him to sift her antecedents thoroughly. He's alreadydone it, and he is quite satisfied with the result. Serve them allright, for that matter."

  But then there was Hetty Glynn. What of her? Hetty Glynn, real ormythical, was a disturbing factor in his deductions. If there wasa real Hetty Glynn and she was Hetty Castleton's double, what then?

  On the fifth day of a series of rather prolonged and tedioussittings, he was obliged to confine his work to an hour and a halfin the forenoon. Mrs. Wrandall was having a few friends in forauction-bridge immediately after luncheon. She asked him to stayover and take a hand, but he declined. He did not play bridge.

  Leslie was coming out on an evening train. Booth, in commentingon this, again remarked a sharp change in Hetty's manner. They hadbeen conversing somewhat buoyantly up to the moment he mentionedLeslie's impending visit. In a flash her manner changed. A quickbut unmistakable frown succeeded her smiles, and for some reasonshe suddenly relapsed into a state of reserve that was little shortof sullen. He was puzzled, as he had been before.

  The day was hot. Sara volunteered to take him home in the motor.An errand in the village was the excuse she gave for riding overwith him. Heretofore she had sent him over alone with the chauffeur.

  She looked very handsome, very tempting, as she came down to thecar.

  "By Jove," he said to himself, "she is wonderful!"

  He handed her into the car with the grace of a courtier, and shesmiled upon him serenely, as a princess might have smiled in thedays when knighthood was in flower.

  When she sat him down at his little garden gate, he put thequestion that had been seething in his mind all the way down theshady stretch they had traversed.

  "Have you ever seen Hetty Glynn, the English actress?"

  Sara was always prepared. She knew the question would come whenleast expected.

  "Oh, yes," she replied, with interest. "Have you noticed the resemblance?They are as like as two peas in a pod. Isn't it extraordinary?"

  He was a bit staggered. "I have never seen Hetty Glynn," he replied.

  "Oh? You have seen photographs of her?" she inquired casually.

  "What has become of her?" he asked, ignoring her question. "Is shestill on the stage?"

  "Heaven knows," she replied lightly. "Miss Castleton and I werespeaking of her last night. We were together the last time I sawher. Who knows? She may have married into the nobility by thistime. She was a very poor actress, but the loveliest thing in theworld--excepting OUR Hetty, of course."

  If he could have seen the troubled look in her eyes as she was whirledoff to the village, he might not have gone about the cottage withsuch a blithesome air. He was happier than he had been in days,and all because of Hetty Glynn!

  Leslie Wrandall did not arrive by the evening train. He telephonedlate in the afternoon, not to Hetty but to Sara, to say that he wasunavoidably detained and would not leave New York until the nextmorning.

  Something in his voice, in his manner of speaking, disturbed her.She went to bed that night with two sources of uneasiness threateningher peace of mind. She scented peril.

  The motor met him at the station and Sara was waiting for him in thecool, awning-covered verandah as he drove up. There was a sullen,dissatisfied look in his face. She was stretched out comfortably,lazily, in a great chaise-
longue, her black little slippers peepingout at him with perfect abandonment.

  "Hello," he said shortly. She gave him her hand. "Sorry I couldn'tget out last night." He shook her hand rather ungraciously.

  "We missed you," she said. "Pull up a chair. I was never so lazyas now. Dear me, I am afraid I'll get stout and gross."

  "Spring fever," he announced. He was plainly out of sorts. "I'llstand, if you don't mind. Beastly tiresome, sitting in a hot, stuffytrain."

  He took a couple of turns across the porch, his eyes shifting inthe eager, annoyed manner of one who seeks for something that, inthe correct order of things, ought to be plainly visible.

  "Please sit down, Leslie. You make me nervous, tramping about likethat. We can't go in for half an hour or more."

  "Can't go in?" he demanded, stopping before her. He began to pullat his little moustache.

  "No. Hetty's posing. They won't permit even me to disturb them."

  He glared. With a final, almost dramatic twist he gave over jerkingat his moustache, and grabbed up a chair, which he put down besideher with a vehemence that spoke plainer than words.

  "I say," he began, scowling in the direction of the doorway, "howlong is he going to be at this silly job?"

  "Silly job? Why, it is to be a masterpiece," she cried.

  "I asked you how long?"

  "Oh, how can I tell? Weeks, perhaps. One can't prod a genius."

  "It's all tommy-rot," he growled. "I suppose I'd better take thenext train back to town."

  "Don't you like talking with me?" she inquired, with a pout.

  "Of course I do," he made haste to say. "But do you mean to saythey won't let anybody in where--Oh, I say! This is rich!"

  "Spectators upset the muse, or words to that effect."

  He stared gloomily at his cigarette case for a moment. Then hecarefully selected a cigarette and tapped it on the back of hishand.

  "See here, Sara, I'm going to get this off my chest," he saidbluntly. "I've been thinking it over all week. I don't like thisportrait painting nonsense."

  "Dear me! Didn't you suggest it?" she inquired innocently, but allthe time her heart was beating violent time to the song of triumph.

  He was jealous. It was what she wanted, what she had hoped for allalong. Her purpose now was to encourage the ugly flame that torturedhim, to fan it into fury, to make it unendurable. She knew himwell: his supreme egoism could not withstand an attack upon itscomplacency. Like all the Wrandalls, he had the habit of thinkingtoo well of himself. He possessed a clearly-defined sense ofhumour, but it did not begin to include self-sacrifice among itsendowments. He had never been able to laugh at himself for theexcellent reason that some things were truly sacred to him.

  She realised this, and promptly laughed at him. He stiffened.

  "Don't snicker, Sara," he growled. He took time to light his cigarette,and at the same time to consider his answer to her question. "Ina way, yes. I suggested a sort of portrait, of course. A sketchything, something like that, you know. But not an all-summeroperation."

  "But she doesn't mind," explained Sara. "In fact, she is enjoyingit. She and Mr. Booth get on famously together."

  "She likes him, eh?"

  "Certainly. Why shouldn't she like him? He is adorable."

  He threw his cigarette over the railing. "Comes here every day, Isuppose?"

  "My dear Leslie, he is to do me as soon as he has finished withher. I don't like your manner."

  "Oh," he said in a dull sort of wonder. No one had ever cut himshort in just that way before. "What's up, Sara? Have I done anythingout of the way?"

  "You are very touchy, it seems to me."

  "I'm sore about this confounded portrait monopoly."

  "I'm sorry, Leslie. I suppose you will have to give in, however.We are three to one against you,--Hetty, Mr. Booth and I."

  "I see," he said, rather blankly. Then he drew his chair closer."See here, Sara, you know I'm terribly keen about her. I think abouther, I dream about her, I--oh, well, here it is in a nutshell: I'min love with her. Now do you understand?"

  "I don't see how you could help being in love with her," she saidcalmly. "I believe it is a habit men have where she is concerned."

  "You're not surprised?" he cried, himself surprised.

  "Not in the least."

  "I mean to ask her to marry me," he announced with finality. Thiswas intended to bowl her over completely.

  She looked at him for an instant, and then shook her head. "I'dlike to be able to wish you good luck."

  He stared. "You don't mean to say she'd be fool enough--" he beganincredulously, but caught himself up in time. "Of course, I'd haveto take my chances," he concluded, with more humility than she hadever seen him display. "Do you know of any one else?"

  "No," she said seriously. "She doesn't confide in me to that extent,I fear. I've never asked."

  "Do you think there was any one back there in England?" He put itin the past tense, so to speak, as if there could be no questionabout the present.

  "Oh, I dare say."

  He was regaining his complacency. "That's neither here nor there,"he declared. "The thing I want you to do, Sara, is to rush thisconfounded portrait. I don't like the idea, not a little bit."

  "I don't blame you for being afraid of the attractive Mr. Booth,"she said, with a significant lifting of her eyebrows.

  "I'm going to have it over with before I go up to town, my deargirl," he announced, in a matter-of-fact way. "I've given the wholesituation a deuce of a lot of thought, and I've made up my mind todo it. I'm not the sort, you know, to delay matters once my mind'smade up. By Jove, Sara, YOU ought to be pleased. I'm not such arotten catch, if I do say it who shouldn't."

  She was perfectly still for a long time, so still that she didnot appear to be breathing. Her eyes grew darker, more mysterious.If he had taken the pains to notice, he would have seen that herfingers were rigid.

  "I AM pleased," she said, very softly, even gently.

  She could have shrieked the words.

  He showed no elation. Why should he? He took it as a matter ofcourse. Settling back in his chair, he lit another cigarette, firstoffering the case to her, but she shook her head. Then he lapsedinto a satisfied discussion of the situation as it appeared to him.All the while she was regarding him with a thoroughly aroused lightin her dark eyes. She was breathing quickly again, and there weremoments when she felt a shudder rush through her veins, as ofexquisite excitement.

  How she hated all these smug Wrandalls!

  "I came to the decision yesterday," he went on, tapping the arm ofthe chair with his finger tips, as if timing his words with careand precision. "Spoke to dad about it at lunch. I was for comingout on the five o'clock, as I'd planned, but he seemed to thinkI'd better talk it over with the mater first. Not that she wouldbe likely to kick up a row, you know, but--well, for policy's sake.See what I mean? Decent thing to do, you know. She never quite gotover the way you and Chal stole a march on her. God knows I'm notlike Chal."

  Her eyes narrowed again. "No," she said, "you are not like yourbrother."

  "Chal was all right, mind you, in what he did," he added hastily,noting the look. "I would do the same, 'pon my soul I would, if therewere any senseless objections raised in my case. But, of course,it WAS right for me to talk it over with her, just the same. SoI stayed in and gave them all the chance to say what they thoughtof me--and, incidentally, of Hetty. Quite the decent thing, don'tyou think? A fellow's mother is his mother, after all. See what Imean?"

  "And she was appeased?" she said, in a dangerously satirical tone.

  "Hardly the word, old girl, but we'll let it stand. She WAS appeased.Wanted to be sure, of course, if I knew my own mind, and all that.Just as if I didn't! Ha! Ha! I was considerate enough to ask herif she was satisfied I wasn't marrying beneath the family dignity.'Gad, she got off a rather neat one at that. Said I might marry underthe family tree if I felt like it. Rather good, eh, for mother? Isaid I preferred a church. Nothing al fresco
for me."

  "She is quite satisfied, then, that you are not throwing yourselfaway on Miss Castleton," said Sara, with a deep breath, which hemistook for a sigh.

  "Oh, trust mother to nose into things. She knows Miss Castleton'spedigree from the ground up. There's Debrett, you see. What's more,you can't fool her in a pinch. She knows blood when she sees it.Father hasn't the same sense of proportion, however. He says younever can tell."

  Sara was startled. "What do you mean?"

  "Oh, it's nothing to speak of; only a way he has of grinding motheronce in a while. He uses you as an example to prove that you nevercan tell, and mother has to admit that he's right. You have upsetevery one of her pet theories. She sees it now, but--whew! Shecouldn't see it in the old days, could she?"

  "I fear not," said she in a low voice. Her eyes smouldered. "Itis quite natural that she should not want you to make the mistakeyour brother made."

  "Oh, please don't put it that way, Sara. You make me feel like aconfounded prig, because that's what it comes to, with them, don'tyou know. And yet my attitude has always been clear to them whereyou're concerned. I was strong for you from the beginning. All thatsilly rot about--"

  "Please, please!" she burst out, quivering all over.

  "I beg your pardon," he stammered. "You--you know how I mean it,dear girl."

  "Please leave me out of it, Leslie," she said, collecting herself.After a moment she went on calmly: "And so you are going to marrymy poor little Hetty, and they are all pleased with the arrangement."

  "If she'll have me," he said with a wink, as if to say there wasn'tany use doubting it. "They're tickled to death."

  "Vivian?"

  "Viv's a snob. She says Hetty's much too good for me, blood and bone.What business, says she, has a Wrandall aspiring to the descendantof Henry the Eighth."

  "What!"

  "The Murgatroyds go back to old Henry, straight as a plummet.'Gad, what Vivvy doesn't know about British aristocracy isn't worthknowing. She looked it up the time they tried to convince her sheought to marry the duke. But she's fond of Hetty. She says she'sa darling. She's right: Hetty is too good for me."

  Sara swished her gown about and rose gracefully from the chaise-longue.Extending her hand to him she said, and he was never to forget thedeep thrill in her voice:

  "Well, I wish you good luck, Leslie. Don't take no for an answer."

  "Lord, if she SHOULD say no," he gasped, confronted by the possibilityof such stupidity on Hetty's part. "You don't think she will?"

  Her answer was a smile of doubt, the effect of which was to destroyhis tranquillity for hours.

  "It is time for luncheon. I suppose we'll have to interrupt them.Perhaps it is just as well, for your sake," she said tauntingly.

  He grinned, but it was a sickly effort.

  "You're the one to spoil anything of that sort," he said, with someascerbity.

  "I?"

  "Certainly," he said with so much meaning in the word that sheflushed.

  "Oh, I see," she mused, with understanding. "Can't you trust Vivianto do that for you?" There was intense irony in the question.

  He laughed disdainfully. "Vivvy wouldn't stand a ghost of a chancewith you, take it from me." He stopped abruptly at the doorway, afrown of recollection creasing his seamless brow. "Oh, that remindsme, there is something else I want to discuss with you, Sara. Afterluncheon will be time enough. Remind me of it, will you?"

  "Not if it is to be unpleasant," she replied, with a sudden chillin her heart.

  "It's this, in a word: Viv would like to have Miss Castleton overto spend a month or so with her after the--well, after the houseis open." He came near to saying after the engagement was announced.

  Sara's decision was made at once. Her face hardened.

  "That is quite out of the question, Leslie," she said.

  "We can discuss it, can't we?" he demanded loftily.

  She did not condescend to reply. They were now in the wide hallway,and she was a step or two ahead of him. Voices could be heardin the recess at the lower end of the hall, beyond the staircase,engaged in what appeared to be a merry exchange of opinions. Hecaught the sound of a low laugh from Booth. There was somethingacutely subdued about it, as if a warning had been whispered bysome one. Leslie's sensitive imagination pictured the unseen girlwith her finger to her lips.

  He caught up with Sara, and, curiously red in the face, snappedout with dogged insistence:

  "Mother is set on having her come, Sara. Can't you see the way theland lays? They--"

  Hetty and Booth came into view at that instant, and his lips wereclosed. The painter was laying a soft, filmy scarf over the girl'sbare shoulders as he followed close behind her.

  "Hello!" he cried, catching sight of Wrandall. "Train late, oldchap? We've been expecting you for the last hour. How are you?"

  He came up with a frank, genuine smile of pleasure on his lips,his hand extended. Leslie rose to the occasion. His self-esteem waslarger than his grievance. He shook Booth's hand heartily, almostexuberantly.

  "Didn't want to disturb you, Brandy," he cried, cheerily. "Besides,Sara wouldn't let me." He then passed on to Hetty, who had laggedbehind. Bending low over her hand, he said something commonplace ina very low tone, at the same time looking slyly out of the cornerof his eye to see if Booth was taking it all in. Finding that hisfriend was regarding him rather fixedly, he obeyed a sudden impulseand raised the girl's slim hand to his lips. As suddenly he releasedher fingers and straightened up with a look of surprise in his eyes;he had distinctly heard the agitated catch in her throat. She wasstaring at her hand in a stupefied sort of way, holding it rigidbefore her eyes for a moment before thrusting it behind her back asif it were a thing to be shielded from all scrutiny save her own.

  "You must not kiss it again, Mr. Wrandall," she said in a low,intense voice. Then she passed him by and hurried up the stairs,without so much as a glance over her shoulder.

  He blinked in astonishment. All of a sudden there swept over himthe unique sensation of shyness--most unique in him. He had neverbeen abashed before in all his life. Now he was curiously consciousof having overstepped the bounds, and for the first time to beshown his place by a girl. This to him, who had no scruples aboutboundary lines!

  All through luncheon he was volatile and gay. There was a brightspot in his cheek, however, that betrayed him to Sara, who alreadysuspected the temper of his thoughts. He talked aeroplaningwithout cessation, directing most of his conversation to Booth, yetthrilled with pleasure each time Hetty laughed at his sallies. Hewas beginning to feel like a half-baked schoolboy in her presence,a most deplorable state of affairs he had to admit.

  "If you hate the trains so much, and your automobile is outof whack, why don't you try volplaning down from the Metropolitantower?" demanded Booth in response to his lugubrious wail againstthe beastly luck of having to go about in railway coaches with alot of red-eyed, nose-blowing people who hadn't got used to theirspring underwear as yet.

  "Sinister suggestion, I must say," he exclaimed. "You must be eagerto see my life blood scattered all over creation. But, speakingof volplaning, I've had three lessons this week. Next week Bronsonsays I'll be flying like a gull. 'Gad, it's wonderful. I've had twotumbles, that's all,--little ones, of course,--net result a barkedknee and a peeled elbow."

  "Watch out you're not flying like an angel before you get throughwith it, Les," cautioned the painter. "I see that a well-knownsociety leader in Chicago was killed yesterday."

  "Oh, I love the danger there is in it," said Wrandall carelessly."That's what gives zest to the sport."

  "I love it, too," said Hetty, her eyes a-gleam. "The glorious feelof the wind as you rush through it! And yet one seems to be standingperfectly still in the air when one is half a mile high and goingfifty miles an hour. Oh, it is wonderful, Mr. Wrandall."

  "I'll take you out in a week or two, Miss Castleton, if you'lltrust yourself with me."

  "I will go," she announced promptly.

  Booth frown
ed. "Better wait a bit," he counselled. "Risky business,Miss Castleton, flying about with fledgelings."

  "Oh, come now!" expostulated Wrandall with some heat. "Don't be awet blanket, old man."

  "I was merely suggesting she'd better wait till you've got used toyour wings."

  "Jimmy Van Wickle took his wife with him the third time up," saidLeslie, as if that were the last word in aeroplaning.

  "It's common report that she keeps Jimmy level, no matter whereshe's got him," retorted Booth.

  "I dare say Miss Castleton can hold me level," said Leslie, witha profound bow to her. "Can't you, Miss Castleton?"

  She smiled. "Oh, as for that, Mr. Wrandall, I think we can alltrust you to cling pretty closely to your own level."

  "Rather ambiguous, that," he remarked dubiously.

  "She means you never get below it, Leslie," said Booth, enjoyinghimself.

  "That's the one great principle in aeroplaning," said Wrandall,quick to recover. "Vivian says I'll break my neck some day, butadmits it will be a heroic way of doing it. Much nobler than pitchingout of an automobile or catapulting over a horse's head in CentralPark." He paused for effect before venturing his next conclusion."It must be ineffably sublime, being squashed--or is it squshed?--aftera drop of a mile or two, isn't it?"

  He looked to see Miss Castleton wince, and was somewhat dashed tofind that she was looking out of the window, quite oblivious tothe peril he was in figuratively for her special consideration.

  Booth was acutely reminded that the term "prig" as appliedto Leslie was a misnomer; he hated the thought of the other word,which reflectively he rhymed with "pad."

  It occurred to him early in the course of this rather one-sideddiscussion that their hostess was making no effort to take partin it, whether from lack of interest or because of its frivolousnature he was, of course, unable to determine. Later, he was struckby the curious pallor of her face, and the lack-lustre expressionof her eyes. She seldom removed her gaze from Wrandall's face,and yet there persisted in the observer's mind the rather uncannyimpression that she did not hear a word her brother-in-law wassaying. He, in turn, took to watching her covertly. At no time didher expression change. For reasons of his own, he did not attemptto draw her into the conversation, fascinated as he was by thestudy of that beautiful, emotionless face. Once he had the queersensation of feeling, rather than seeing, a haunted look in her eyes,but he put it down to fancy on his part. Doubtless, he concluded,the face or voice or manner of her husband's brother recalledtragic memories from which she could not disengage herself. Butundoubtedly there was something peculiar in the way she looked atLeslie through those dull, unblinking eyes. It was some time beforeBooth realised that she made but the slightest pretence of touchingthe food that was placed before her by the footman.

  And Leslie babbled on in blissful ignorance of, not to say disregardfor, this strange ghost at the feast, for, to Booth's mind, theghost of Challis Wrandall was there.

  Turning to Miss Castleton with a significant look in his eyes, meantto call her attention to Mrs. Wrandall, he was amazed to find thatevery vestige of colour had gone from the girl's face. She waslistening to Wrandall and replying in monosyllables, but that shewas aware of the other woman's abstraction was not for an instantto be doubted. Suddenly, after a quick glance at Sara's face, shelooked squarely into Booth's eyes, and he saw in hers an expressionof actual concern, if not alarm.

  Leslie was in the middle of a sentence when Sara laughed aloud,without excuse or reason. The next instant she was looking from oneto the other in a dazed sort of way, as if coining out of a dream.

  Wrandall turned scarlet. There had been nothing in his remarks tocall for a laugh, he was quite sure of that. Flushing slightly,she murmured something about having thought of an amusing story,and begged him to go on, she wouldn't be rude again.

  He had little zest for continuing the subject and sullenly disposedof it in a word or two.

  "What the devil was there to laugh at, Brandy?" he demanded of hisfriend after the women had left them together on the porch a fewminutes later. Hetty had gone upstairs with Mrs. Wrandall, her armclasped tightly about the older woman's waist.

  "I dare say she was thinking about you falling a mile or two," saidBooth pleasantly.

  But he was perplexed.