She glided away as she spoke without waiting for him to answer, and as soon as he was free from the magic of her presence, reaction came and he was torn by a thousand doubts and fears and worse.

“Why, I’m mad, mad,” he groaned.  “I’ve no right to tell what I said I would, no right at all.”

And again there returned to him his vivid, dreadful memory of how she had started on that midnight drive with her car so awfully laden.

And again there returned to him his old appalling doubt: 

“Did she not know?”

And though he would willingly have left his life in her hands, he knew he had no right to put that of others there, and yet it seemed to him he must keep the appointment and the promise he had made.

About nine that evening, then, he made his way to the sweet-pea border, though, as he went, he resolved that he would not tell her what he had said he would.

Because he trusted his own strength so little when he was with her, he confirmed this resolution by an oath he swore to himself:  and even that he was not certain would be a sure protection against the witchery she wielded.

So it was with a mind doubtful and troubled more than it had ever been since the beginning of these things that he came to the border where the sweet-peas grew, and saw a dark shadow already close by them.

But when he came a little nearer he saw that it was not Ella who was there but Deede Dawson and his first thought was that she had betrayed him.

“That you, Dunn?” Deede Dawson hailed him in his usual pleasant, friendly manner.

“Yes,” Dunn answered warily, keeping himself ready for any eventuality.

Deede Dawson took a cigar from his pocket and lighted it and offered one to Dunn, who refused it abruptly.

Deede Dawson laughed at that in his peculiar, mirthless way.

“Am I being the third that’s proverbially no company?” he asked.  “Were you expecting to find some one else here?  I thought I saw a white frock vanish just as I came up.”

Dunn made no answer, and Deede Dawson continued after a pause

“That’s why I waited.  You are being just a little bit rapid in this affair, aren’t you?”

“I don’t know why.  You said something, didn’t you?” muttered Dunn, beginning to think that, after all, Deede Dawson’s presence here was due to accident—­or rather to his unceasing and unfailing watchfulness, and not to any treachery of Ella’s.

“Yes, I did, didn’t I?” he agreed pleasantly.  “But you are a working gardener taken on out of charity to give you a chance and keep you out of gaol, and you are looking a little high when you think of your master’s ward and daughter, aren’t you?”

“There was a time when I shouldn’t have thought so,” answered Dunn.

“We’re talking of the present, my good man,” Deede Dawson said impatiently.  “If you want the girl you must win her.  It can be done, but it won’t be easy.”