Explaining that he had come with a party of friends on a hunting trip, he told them how he had met Brian Oakley, and so had learned of their camp hidden behind the old orchard.  The rest of his party, he said, had gone on up the canyon.  They would stop at Burnt Pine on Laurel Creek, where he could easily join them before night.  He could not think, he declared, of passing so near without greeting his friends.

“You two certainly are expert when it comes to finding snug, out-of-the-way quarters,” he commented, searching the camp and the immediate surroundings with a careful and, ostensibly, an appreciative eye.  “A thousand people might pass this old, deserted place without ever dreaming that you were so ideally hidden back here.”

As he finished speaking, his roving eye came to rest upon a pair of gloves that Sibyl—­the last time she had called—­had carelessly left lying upon a stump close by a giant sycamore where, in camp fashion, the rods and creels and guns were kept.  The artist had intended to return the gloves the day before, together with a book of trout-flies which the girl had also forgotten; but, in his eagerness for the day’s outing, he had gone off without them.

The observing Conrad Lagrange did not fail to note that James Rutlidge had seen the telltale gloves.  Fixing his peculiar eyes upon the visitor, he asked abruptly, with polite but purposeful interest, after the health of Mr. and Mrs. Taine and Louise.

The faint shadow of a suggestive smile that crossed the heavy features of James Rutlidge, as he turned his gaze from the gloves to meet the look of the novelist was maddening.

“The old boy is steadily going down,” he said without feeling.  “The doctors tell me that he can’t last through the winter.  It’ll be a relief to everybody when he goes.  Mrs. Taine is well and beautiful, as always—­remarkable how she keeps up appearances, considering her husband’s serious condition.  Louise is quite as usual.  They will all be back in Fairlands in another month.  They sent regards to you both—­in case I should run across you."’

The two men made the usual conventional replies, adding that they were returning to Fairlands the next day.

“So soon?” exclaimed their visitor, with another meaning smile.  “I don’t see how you can think of leaving your really delightful retreat.  I understand you have such charming neighbors too.  Perhaps though, they are also returning to the orange groves and roses.”

Aaron King’s face flushed hotly, and he was about to reply with vigor to the sneering words, when Conrad Lagrange silenced him with a quick look.  Ignoring the reference to their neighbors, the novelist replied suavely that they felt they must return to civilization as some matters in connection with the new edition of his last novel demanded his attention, and the artist wished to get back to his studio and to his work.

“Really,” urged Rutlidge, mockingly, “you ought not to go down now.  The deer season opens in two days.  Why not join our party for a hunt?  We would be delighted to have you.”