“I met the Colonel, Belle,” said Mr. Quest, “coming here with the benevolent intention of giving you some snipe, so I brought him up by the short way.”

“That is very kind of you, Colonel Quaritch,” said she with a sweet smile (for she had the sweetest smile imaginable).

He looked at her.  There was something about her face which attracted his attention, something unusual.

“What are you looking at?” she asked.

“You,” he said bluntly, for they were out of hearing of the other two.  “If I were poetically minded I should say that you looked like the Tragic Muse.”

“Do I?” she answered, laughing.  “Well, that is curious, because I feel like Comedy herself.”

“There’s something wrong with that woman,” thought the Colonel to himself as he extracted two couple of snipe from his capacious coat tails.  “I wonder what it is.”

Just then Mr. Quest and Edward Cossey passed out into the garden talking.

“Here are the snipe, Mrs. Quest,” he said.  “I have had rather good luck.  I killed four couple and missed two couple more; but then I had a new gun, and one can never shoot so well with a new gun.”

“Oh, thank you,” she said, “do pull out the ‘painters’ for me.  I like to put them in my riding hat, and I can never find them myself.”

“Very well,” he answered, “but I must go into the garden to do it; there is not light enough here.  It gets dark so soon now.”

Accordingly he stepped out through the window, and began to hunt for the pretty little feathers which are to be found at the angle of a snipe’s wing.

“Is that the new gun, Colonel Quaritch?” said Mrs. Quest presently; “what a beautiful one!”

“Be careful,” he said, “I haven’t taken the cartridges out.”

If he had been looking at her, which at that moment he was not, Harold would have seen her stagger and catch at the wall for support.  Then he would have seen an awful and malevolent light of sudden determination pass across her face.

“All right,” she said, “I know about guns.  My father used to shoot and I often cleaned his gun,” and she took the weapon up and began to examine the engraving on the locks.

“What is this?” she said, pointing to a little slide above the locks on which the word “safe” was engraved in gold letters.

“Oh, that’s the safety bolt,” he said.  “When you see the word ‘safe,’ the locks are barred and the gun won’t go off.  You have to push the bolt forward before you can fire.”

“So?” she said carelessly, and suiting the action to the word.

“Yes, so, but please be careful, the gun is loaded.”

“Yes, I’ll be careful,” she answered.  “Well, it is a very pretty gun, and so light that I believe I could shoot with it myself.”