X.

Perhaps it was as well for all parties that Frank Armitage concluded that he must have another whiff of tobacco that night as an incentive to the “think” he had promised himself.  He had strolled through the park to the grove of trees out on the point and seated himself in the shadows.  Here his reflections were speedily interrupted by the animated flirtations of a few couples who, tiring of the dance, came out into the coolness of the night and the seclusion of the grove, where their murmured words and soft laughter soon gave the captain’s nerves a strain they could not bear.  He broke cover and betook himself to the very edge of the stone retaining wall out on the point.

He wanted to think calmly and dispassionately; he meant to weigh all he had read and heard and form his estimate of the gravity of the case before going to bed.  He meant to be impartial,—­to judge her as he would judge any other woman so compromised; but for the life of him he could not.  He bore with him the mute image of her lovely face, with its clear, truthful, trustful dark eyes.  He saw her as she stood before him on the little porch when they shook hands on their laughing—­or his laughing—­compact, for she would not laugh.  How perfect she was!—­her radiant beauty, her uplifted eyes, so full of their self-reproach and regret at the speech she had made at his expense!  How exquisite was the grace of her slender, rounded form as she stood there before him, one slim hand half shyly extended to meet the cordial clasp of his own!  He wanted to judge and be just; but that image dismayed him.  How could he look on this picture and then—­on that,—­the one portrayed in the chain of circumstantial evidence which the colonel had laid before him?  It was monstrous! it was treason to womanhood!  One look in her eyes, superb in their innocence, was too much for his determined impartiality.  Armitage gave himself a mental kick for what he termed his imbecility, and went back to the hotel.

“It’s no use,” he muttered.  “I’m a slave of the weed, and can’t be philosophic without my pipe.”

Up to his little box of a room he climbed, found his pipe-case and tobacco-pouch, and in five minutes was strolling out to the point once more, when he came suddenly upon the night-watchman,—­a personage of whose functions and authority he was entirely ignorant.  The man eyed him narrowly, and essayed to speak.  Not knowing him, and desiring to be alone, Armitage pushed past, and was surprised to find that a hand was on his shoulder and the man at his side before he had gone a rod.

“Beg pardon, sir,” said the watchman, gruffly, “but I don’t know you.  Are you stopping at the hotel?”

“I am,” said Armitage, coolly, taking his pipe from his lips and blowing a cloud over his other shoulder.  “And who may you be?”

“I am the watchman; and I do not remember seeing you come to-day.”