her brother's advancing tread she turned and ran back to him,
meeting him as he reached the bottom of the stair and clasping
both hands anxiously about his big forearm.

She seemed about to break out in excited. even frightened
speech, when chancing to raise her eyes. she saw Gavin Brice
calmly descending from the hall above. At sight of him her
eyes dilated. Milo had begun to speak. She put one hand
warningly across her brother's bearded mouth. At the same
moment Gavin, halting midway on the stairs, said with
deprecatory meekness:

"You didn't tell me what time to be ready for breakfast. I'd
hate to be late and--"

He got no further. Nor did he seek to. His ears had been
straining to make certain of the ever approaching sound of
footsteps across the lawn. Now an impatient tread echoed on
the veranda, and a man's figure blocked the doorway.

The newcomer was slender, graceful, with the form of an
athletic boy rather than of a mature man. He was pallid and
black eyed. His face had a classic beauty which, on second
glance, was marred by an almost snakelike aspect of the small
black eyes and a sinister smile which seemed to hover
eternally around the thin lips. His whole bearing suggested
something serpentine in its grace and a smoothly half-jesting
deadliness.

So much the first glimpse told Brice as he stood thereon the