Anne smiled and turned to the window.  They went out together into the golden spring evening.

The herb garden was some distance from the house.  Capper strode along in silence, with bent brows.  More than ever Anne wondered what had brought him.  She did not try to make conversation for him, realising by instinct that such effort would be vain as well as unwelcome.  She merely walked quietly beside him, directing their steps whither he had desired to go.

They were out of sight of the house before he spoke.  “Say, madam, I’m told you know the Errol family off by heart without needing to look ’em up.”

She glanced at him in surprise.  “Of course I know them.  Yes, I know them all.”

“Well?” he demanded.

“Oh, quite well.”  Almost involuntarily she began to explain the intimacy.  “I was taken to their house after a hunting accident, and I was an invalid there for several weeks.”

“That so?” Again piercingly the American’s eyes scanned her.  “You’re real friendly then?  With which in particular?”

She hesitated momentarily.  Then, “I am very fond of Mrs. Errol,” she said, speaking very quietly.  “But Nap was my first friend, and afterwards Lucas—­”

“Oh, Nap!”

There was such withering contempt in the exclamation that she had perforce to remark it.

“Nap is evidently no favourite with you,” she said.

He raised his brows till they nearly met his hair.  “Nap, my dear lady,” he drily observed, “is doubtless all right in his own sphere.  It isn’t mine, and it isn’t yours.  I came over to this country at his request and in his company, and a queerer devil it has never been my lot to encounter.  But what can you expect?  I’ve never yet seen him in a blanket and moccasins, but I imagine that he’d be considerably preferable that way.  I guess he’s just a fish out of water on this side of civilisation.”

“What can you mean?” Anne said.

For the second time that afternoon she felt as if the ground beneath her had begun to tremble.  She looked up at him with troubled eyes.  Surely the whole world was rocking!

“I mean what I say, madam,” he told her curtly.  “It’s a habit of mine.  There is a powerful streak of red in Nap Errol’s blood, or I am much mistaken.”

“Ah!” Anne said, and that was all.  In a flash she understood him.  She felt as if he had performed some ruthless operation upon her, and she was too exhausted to say more.  Unconsciously her hand pressed her heart.  It was beating strangely, spasmodically; sometimes it did not beat at all.  For she knew beyond all doubting that what he said was true.

“I don’t say the fellow is an out-and-out savage,” Capper was saying.  “P’r’aps he’d be more tolerable if he were.  But the fatal streak is there.  Never noticed it?  I thought you women noticed everything.  Oh, I can tell you he’s made things hum on our side more times than I’ve troubled to count.  Talk of the devil in New York and you very soon find the conversation drifting round to Nap Errol.  Now and then he has a lapse into sheer savagery, and then there is no controlling him.  It’s just as the fit takes him.  He’s never to be trusted.  It’s an ineradicable taint.”