When he looked at his watch it was nine o’clock.

“I must go,” he said, hastily rising; “it would hardly do for me to be found here!”

“What do you mean?” she asked in surprise.

“What do you suppose your husband would say if he came home and found me here?”

Evelyn flushed angrily.

“My husband has confidence in me,” she answered proudly.  “I don’t know what he thinks of you, but I know what he thinks of me, and it would make no difference what company he found me in, he would never doubt me.  I trust him in the same way.  I would believe his word against that of the whole world.”

She held her handsome head high when she said this.

Rance Belmont looked at her with a dull glow in his black eyes.

“I hope you are right,” he said, watching the color coming in her face.

“I am right,” she said after a pause, daring which she had looked at him defiantly.  He was wise enough to see he had made a false move and had lost ground in her regard.

“I think you had better go,” she said at last.  “I do not like that insinuation of yours that your presence here might be misconstrued.  Yes, I want you to go.  I was glad to see you; I was never so glad to see anyone; I was paralyzed with fear; but now I am myself again, and I am sure Fred will come home.”

There was a sneering smile on his face which she understood and resented.

“In that case I had better go,” he said.

“That is not the reason I want you to go.  I tell you again that Fred would not believe that I was untrue to him.  He believes in me utterly.”  She drew herself up with an imperious gesture and added:  “I am worthy of his trust.”

Rance Belmont thought he had never seen her so beautiful.

“I will not leave you,” he declared.  “Forgive me for speaking as I did.  I judged your husband by the standards of the world.  I might have known that the man who won you must be different from other men.  It was only for your sake that I said I must go.  I care nothing for his fury.  If it were the fury of a hundred men I would stay with you; just to be near you, to hear your sweet voice, to see you, is heaven to me.”

Evelyn sprang to her feet indignantly as he arose and came towards her.

Just at that moment the door opened, and Fred Brydon, having heard the last words, stood face to face with them both!

CHAPTER IX.

HIS EVIL GENIUS.

When Fred Brydon went to his work that morning, smarting from the angry words that Evelyn had hurled at him, everyone he met noticed how gloomy and burdened he seemed to be; how totally unlike his former easy good-nature and genial cheerfulness was his strange air of reserve.

They thought they knew the cause, and told each other so when he was not listening.

When he came into the kitchen to wash himself at noon he heard one of the men say to another in an aside:  “He’ll be the last one to catch on.”