“I don’t like the man at all,” Mrs. Dawson repeated.  “All that hair, too.  Do you like him?”

“I don’t know,” Ella answered, and after she and her mother had returned from their walk she took occasion to find Dunn in the garden and ask him some trifling question or another.

“You are interested in chess?” she remarked, when he had answered her.

“All problems are interesting till one finds the answer to them,” he replied.

“There’s one I know of,” she retorted.  “I wish you would solve for me.”

“Tell me what it is,” he said quickly.  “Will you?”

She shook her head slightly, but she was watching him very intently from her clear, candid eyes, and now, as always, her nearness to him, the infinite appeal he found in her every look and movement, the very fragrance of her hair, bore him away beyond all purpose and intention.

“Tell me what it is,” he said again.  “Won’t you?  Miss Cayley, if you and I were to trust each other—­it’s not difficult to see there’s something troubling you.”

“Most people have some trouble or another,” she answered evasively.

He came a little nearer to her, and instead of the gruff, harsh tones he habitually used, his voice was singularly pleasant and low as he said: 

“People who are in trouble need help, Miss Cayley.  Will you let me help you?”

“You can’t,” she answered, shaking her head.  “No one could.”

“How can you tell that?” he asked eagerly.  “Perhaps I know more already than you think.”

“I daresay you do,” she said slowly.  “I have thought that a long time.  Will you tell me one thing? —­Are you his friend or not?”

There was no need for Dunn to ask to whom the pronoun she used referred.

“I am so much not his friend,” he answered as quietly and deliberately as she had spoken.  “That it’s either his life or mine.”

At that she drew back in a startled way as though his words had gone beyond her expectations.

“How do I know I can trust you?” she said presently, half to herself, half to him.

“You can,” he said, and it was as though he flung the whole of his enigmatic and vivid personality into those two words.

“You can,” he said again.  “Absolutely.”

“I must think,” she muttered, pressing her hands to her head.  “So much depends—­how can I trust you?  Why should I—­why?”

“Because I’ll trust you first,” he answered with a touch of exultation in his manner.  “Listen to me and I’ll tell you everything.  And that means I put my life in your hands.  Well, that’s nothing; I would do that any time; but other people’s lives will be in your power, too—­yes, and everything I’m here for, everything.  Now listen.”

“Not now,” she interrupted sharply.  “He may be watching, listening —­he generally is.”  Again there was no need between them to specify to whom the pronoun referred.  “Will you meet me tonight near the sweet-pea border—­about nine?”