CHAPTER III

Nothing is so full of possibilities as the seemingly impossible.

Maitland's request that Browne should not leave the room seemed to
us all a veritable thunderbolt. It impressed me at the time as
being a thinly veneered command, and I remember fearing lest the
artist should be injudicious enough to disregard it. If he could
have seen his own face for the next few moments, he would have had
a lesson in expression which years of portrait work may fail to
teach him. At length the rapidly changing kaleidoscope of his mind
seemed to settle, to group its varied imaginings about a definite
idea,--the idea that he had been all but openly accused, in the
presence of Miss Darrow, of being instrumental in her father's death.
For a moment, as he faced Maitland, whom he instinctively felt to be
a rival, he looked so dark and sinister that one could easily have
believed him capable of almost any crime.

Gwen was no less surprised than the rest of us at Maitland's
interference, but she did not permit it to show in her voice as she
said quietly: "Mr. Browne has consented to go for an officer." As
I felt sure she must have thought Maitland already knew this, as
anyone else must have heard what had passed, I looked upon her
remark as a polite way of saying:

"I am mistress here."

Maitland apparently so regarded it, for he replied quickly: "I hope