There was a constraint in her manner which was all too obvious, and
when presently, laden with the spoil of the rose garden, she gave me a
parting smile and hurried into the house, I sat there very still for a
while, and something of the brightness had faded from the coming, nor
did life seem so glad a business as I had thought it quite recently.




CHAPTER XIII

AT THE GUEST HOUSE



I presented myself at the Guest House at half-past eleven. My mental
state was troubled and indescribably complex. Perhaps my own uneasy,
thoughts were responsible for the idea, but it seemed to me that the
atmosphere of Cray's Folly had changed yet again. Never before had I
experienced a sense of foreboding like that which had possessed me
throughout the hours of this bright summer's morning.

Colonel Menendez had appeared about nine o'clock. He exhibiting no
traces of illness that were perceptible to me. But this subtle change
which I had detected, or thought I had detected, was more marked in
Madame Staemer than in any one. In her strange, still eyes I had read
what I can only describe as a stricken look. It had none of the heroic
resignation and acceptance of the inevitable which had so startled me
in the face of the Colonel on the previous day. There was a bitterness
in it, as of one who has made a great but unwilling sacrifice, and