She was so sure of herself to-day, and so nearly sure of Ashley, that even the shock of seeing Peter Davenant coming up the driveway, between the clumps of shrubbery, brought her no dismay.  She was quick in reading the situation.  It was after eleven o’clock; he had had time to go to Boston, and, learning that her father was not at his office, had come to seek him at home.

She made her arrangements promptly.  Withdrawing from the window before he could see her, she bade the maid say that, Mr. Guion being ill, Miss Guion would be glad to see Mr. Davenant, if he would have the kindness to come in.  To give an air of greater naturalness to the mise-en-scene, she took a bit of embroidery from her work-basket, and began to stitch at it, seating herself near the open window.  She was not without a slight, half-amused sense of lying in ambush, as if some Biblical voice were saying to her, “Up! for the Lord hath delivered thine enemy into thine hand.”

* * * * *

“My father isn’t well,” she explained to Davenant, when she had shaken hands with him and begged him to sit down.  “I dare say he may not be able to go out for two or three days to come.”

“So they told me at his office.  I was sorry to hear it.”

“You’ve been to his office, then?  He told me you were there yesterday.  That’s partly the reason why I’ve ventured to ask you to come in.”

She went on with her stitching, turning the canvas first on one side and then on the other, sticking the needle in with very precise care.  He fancied she was waiting for him to “give himself away” by saying something, no matter what.  Having, however, a talent for silence without embarrassment, he made use of it, knowing that by means of it he could force her to resume.

He was not at ease; he was not without misgiving.  It had been far from his expectation to see her on this errand, or, for the matter of that, on any errand at all.  It had never occurred to him that Guion could speak to her of a transaction so private, so secret, as that proposed between them.  Since, then, his partner in the undertaking had been foolish, Davenant felt the necessity on his side of being doubly discreet.  Moreover, he was intuitive enough to feel her antipathy toward him on purely general grounds.  “I’m not her sort,” was the summing-up of her sentiments he made for himself.  He could not wholly see why he excited her dislike since, beyond a moment of idiotic presumption long ago, he had never done her any harm.

He fancied that his personal appearance, as much as anything, was displeasing to her fastidiousness.  He was so big, so awkward; his hands and feet were so clumsy.  A little more and he would have been ungainly; perhaps she considered him ungainly as it was.  He had tried to negative his defects by spending a great deal of money on his clothes and being as particular as a girl about his nails; but he felt