Clive was sending a kiss through the night towards Ella's room and
his nocturnal visit was nothing more than the whim of a love-sick
youth.

With Dunn, his first amusement gave way almost at once to an extreme
annoyance.

For, in the first place, these proceedings seemed to him exceedingly
impertinent, for what possible right did Clive imagine he had to
come playing the fool like this, sighing in the dark and blowing
kisses like a baby to its mammy?

And secondly, unless he were greatly mistaken, John Clive might just
as sensibly and safely have dropped overboard from a ship in
mid-Atlantic for a swim as come to indulge his sentimentalities in
the Bittermeads garden at night.

"You silly ass!" he said in a voice that was very low, but very
distinct and very full of an extreme disgust and anger.

Clive fairly leaped in the air with his surprise, and turned and
made a sudden dash at the spot whence Dunn's voice had come, but
where Dunn no longer was.

"What the blazes--?" he began, spluttering in ineffectual rage.
"You--you--!"

"You silly ass!" Dunn repeated, no less emphatically than before.