The interrogation always in the mind of a natural criminal, prompted
McMahon to take a seat near the open letters. As soon as the clerk left
the room, a hairy hand reached out for the nearest letter, and a swift
glance took in its contents.

A grimly cheerful, vicious smile lighted up the heavily bearded face.
Placing the letter on the desk again, as soon as it was read, McMahon
almost threw himself over to the chair at some distance from the desk,
which the clerk had first offered him. There he sat with his elbows on
his knees and his chin in his hands when Burlingame entered the room.

Ten minutes later, with a receipted bill in his pocket, Tom McMahon made
for the barber's shop which Mazarine had entered. He found it full, but
seated in the red-plush chair, tipped back at a convenient angle, was
Mazarine undergoing the triple operations of shaving his upper lip,
beard-trimming and haircutting. From that moment and for the rest of all
the long day and evening, Joel Mazarine commanded the unvarying interest
of two members of the McMahon family.

Orlando Guise had had a long day, but one that somehow made him whistle
or sing to himself most of the time. In a way, half a lifetime had gone
since the day before, when he had first seen what he called to himself
"the captive maid." He had never been so happy in his life; and yet he
knew that he had not the faintest right to be happy. The girl who had so
upset his self-control as to make him stumble on her doorstep was the
wife of another man. It was, of course, silly to call him "another man,"
because he seemed a million miles away from any sphere in which Orlando
lived. Yet he was another man; and he was also the husband of the girl
who had made Orlando feel for the very first time a strange singing in