and passionately avow his utter trust in one immeasurably above the rank and file of women.  He had racked Themar with insistent questions, he had quarreled again and again with the Baron since that night by the pool, until now he had at his finger-ends, the ways and days of Philip Poynter since the day the Baron had dispatched his young secretary upon the ill-fated errand to Diane.  And as there were finer moments when his faith in the girl was unmarred by suspicion, so there were wild, unscrupulous hours of jealousy when he could have killed Philip and taunted her with insults.

Driving steadily, he came in course of time to a narrow, grass-banked creek.  The nomads on the winding road beside it were many and beautiful.  Here were yellow butterflies, sandpipers and kingfishers, and now and then an eagle cleaved the dazzling blue overhead with magnificent wing-strokes.  Sand hills reflected the white sunlight.  Beyond glistened a stretch of open sea with a flock of beautiful gannets of black and white whipping its surface.  But Ronador did not thrill to the peaceful picture.  He glanced instead at the buzzard which seemed curiously to hang above the long black car.

Now presently as he eyed the road ahead for a glimpse of the van, Ronador saw the familiar lines of a music-machine and drove by it with a glance of interest.  Instantly the blood rushed violently to his face.  For, as the horse and music-machine had been familiar, so was the driver, who swept a broad sombrero from his head and revealed the face of Philip Poynter.

With a curse Ronador abruptly brought the car to a standstill.  The very irony of this masquerade fired him with terrible anger.

“You!” he choked.  “You!”

Philip nodded.

“I guess you’re right,” he said.

The blazing dark eyes and the calm, unruffled blue ones met in a glance of implacable antagonism.  Not in the least impressed Philip replaced his sombrero and spoke to his horse.  Fish crows flew overhead with croaks of harsh derision.

Another buzzard!  With a terrible jerk, Ronador drove on, his face scarlet.

So Poynter still dared to follow!  By a trick he had bought the music-machine, by a trick he had given the Regent’s Hymn to the curious ears at Sherrill’s.  Very well, there were tricks and tricks!  And if one man may trick, so, surely, may another.

Passion had always hushed the voice of the imperial conscience, though indeed it awoke and cried in a terrible voice when passion was dead.  So now with stiff white lips fixed in unalterable resolution, Ronador drove viciously on, turning over and over in his fevered brain the ways and days of Philip Poynter. . . .  So at last he came to the camp he sought.

It was pitched upon the upland bank of the winding creek and as the car shot rapidly toward it, a great blue heron flapped indignantly and soared away to the marsh beyond the trees.  Ronador jumped queerly and colored with a sense of guilt.