applause of that crowd as a man who had just seen a ghost.

He thought of them as that crowd, but after all, they were good-natured
people, and when they fancied that he was somehow vexed with the turn the
talk had taken, they began to speak of other things; St. John himself led
the way, and when he got Hewson alone after breakfast, he made him a sort
of amend. "I didn't mean to annoy you, old fellow," he said, "with my
story about the burglary."

"Oh, that's all right," Hewson brisked up in response, as he took the
cigar St. John offered him. "I'm afraid I must have seemed rather stupid.
I had got to thinking about something else, and I couldn't pull myself
away from it. I wasn't annoyed at all."

Whether St. John thought this sufficient gratitude for his reparation did
not appear. As Hewson did not offer to break the silence in which they
went on smoking, his host made a pretext, toward the end of their cigars,
after bearing the burden of the conversation apparently as long as he
could, of being reminded of something by the group of women descending
into the garden from the terraced walk beyond it and then slowly, with
little pauses, trailing their summer draperies among the flower-beds and
bushes toward the house.

"Oh, by-the-way," he said, "I should like to introduce you to Miss
Hernshaw; she came last night with Mrs. Rock: that tall girl, there,
lagging behind a little. She's an original."

"I noticed her at breakfast," Hewson answered, now first aware of having
been struck with the strange beauty and strange behavior of the slim
girl, who drooped in her chair, with her little head fallen forward, and