He looked at her longingly. If she would only show some little
sign of tenderness!--if he might just kiss her hand, he thought!
But she withdrew into the shadow, and he had no excuse for
lingering.

"Good-night!" he said, softly. "Good-night, my angel Innocent!
Good-night, my little love!"

She made no response and moved slowly backward into the room. But
as he reluctantly left his point of vantage and began to descend,
stepping lightly from branch to branch of the accommodating
wistaria, he saw the shadowy outline of her figure once more as
she stretched out a hand and closed the lattice window, drawing a
curtain across it. With the drawing of that curtain the beauty of
the summer night was over for him, and poising himself lightly on
a tough stem which was twisted strongly enough to give him
adequate support and which projected some four feet above the
smooth grass below, he sprang down. Scarcely had he touched the
ground when a man, leaping suddenly out of a thick clump of bushes
near that side of the house, caught him in a savage grip and shook
him with all the fury of an enraged mastiff shaking a rat. Taken
thus unawares, and rendered almost breathless by the swiftness of
the attack, Clifford struggled in the grasp of his assailant and
fought with him desperately for a moment without any idea of his
identity,--then as by a dexterous twist of body he managed to
partially extricate himself, he looked up and saw the face of Ned
Landon, livid and convulsed with passion.

"Landon!" he gasped--"What's the matter with you? Are you mad?"