"No," gasped Rutton, "I'm all right. Besides," he added beneath his
breath, so that Amber barely caught the syllables, "it's too late."

As rapidly as he had lost he seemed to regain mastery of his
inexplicable emotion. His face became again composed, almost immobile,
and stepping to the table he selected a cigarette and rolled it gently
between his slim brown fingers. "I'm sorry to have alarmed you," he
said, his tone a bit too even not to breed a doubt in the mind of his
hearer. "It's nothing serious--a little trouble of the heart, of long
standing, incurable--I hope."

Perplexed, yet hesitating to press him further, Amber watched him
furtively, instinctively assured that between this man and the Farrells
there existed some extraordinary bond; wondering how that could be,
convinced in his soul that somehow the entanglement involved the woman
he loved, he still feared to put his suspicions to the question, lest
he should learn that which he had no right to know ... and while he
watched was startled by the change that came over Rutton. At ease, one
moment, outwardly composed if absorbed in thought, the next he was
rigid, every muscle taut, every nerve tense as a steel spring, his
keen, thoughtful face hardening with a look of brutal hatred, his eyes
narrowing until no more than a glint of fire was visible between the
lashes, lips straining apart until they showed thin and bloodless, with
a gleam of white, set teeth between. His head jerked back suddenly, his
gaze fixing itself first upon the window, then shifting to the door.
And his fingers, contracting, tore the cigarette in half.

"Rutton, what the deuce is the matter?"

Rutton seemed not to hear; Amber got his answer from the door, which