“Shall I make the third?” he wondered.  “I do not care if I do, not I.”

The path Ella had fled by led into another along which when she reached it she saw Deede Dawson coming.

She stopped at once and began to busy herself with a flower-bed overrun with weeds, but she could not entirely conceal her agitation from her stepfather’s cold grey eyes.

“Oh, there you are, Ella,” he said, with all that false geniality of his that filled the girl with such loathing and distrust.  “Have you seen Dunn?  Oh, there he is, isn’t he?  I wanted to ask you, Ella, what do you think of Dunn?”

She glanced over her shoulder towards where Dunn stood, and she managed to answer with a passable air of indifference.

“Well, I suppose,” she said, “that he is quite the ugliest man I ever saw.  Of course, if he cut all of that hair off—­”

Deede Dawson laughed though his eyes remained as hard and cold as ever.

“I shall have to give him orders to shave,” he said.  “Your mother was telling me I ought to the other day, she said it didn’t look respectable to have a man about with all that hair on his face.  Though I don’t see myself why hair isn’t respectable, do you?”

“It looks odd,” answered Ella carelessly.

Deede Dawson laughed again, and walked on to where Dunn was standing waiting for him.  With his perpetual smile that his cold and evil eyes so strangely contradicted, he said to him: 

“Well, what have you and Ella been talking about?”

“Why do you ask?” growled Dunn.

“Because she looks upset,” answered Deede Dawson.  “Oh, don’t be shy about it.  Shall I give you a little good advice?”

“What?”

“Never shave.”

“Why not?”

“Because that thick growth of hair hiding your face gives you an air of mystery and romance no woman could possibly resist.  You’re a perpetual puzzle, and to pique a woman’s curiosity is the surest way to interest her.  Why, there are plenty of women who would marry you simply to find out what is under all that hair.  So never you shave.”

“I don’t mean to.”

“Unless, of course, you have to—­for purposes of disguise, for example.”

“I thought you were hinting that the beard itself was a disguise,” retorted Dunn.

“Removing it might become a better one,” answered Deede Dawson.  “You told me once you knew this part fairly well.  Do you know Wreste Abbey?”

Dunn gave his questioner a scowling look that seemed full of anger and suspicion.

“What about it if I do?” he asked.

“I am asking if you do know it,” said Deede Dawson.

“Yes, I do.  Well?”

“It belongs to Lord Chobham, doesn’t it?”

Dunn nodded.

“Old man, isn’t he?”

“I’m not a book of reference about Lord Chobham,” answered Dunn. 
“If you want to know his age, you can easily find out, I suppose. 
What’s the sense of asking me a lot of questions like that?”