Islington smiled, but not very gayly.

“And then I think it much better for us to part here under these frescos, don’t you?  Good by.”

She extended her long, slim hand.

“Out in the sunlight there, when my eyes were red, you were very anxious to look at me,” she added, in a dangerous voice.

Islington raised his sad eyes to hers.  Something glittering upon her own sweet lashes trembled and fell.

“Blanche!”

She was rosy enough now, and would have withdrawn her hand, but Islington detained it.  She was not quite certain but that her waist was also in jeopardy.  Yet she could not help saying, “Are you sure that there isn’t anything in the way of a young woman that would keep you?”

“Blanche!” said Islington in reproachful horror.

“If gentlemen will roar out their secrets before an open window, with a young woman lying on a sofa on the veranda, reading a stupid French novel, they must not be surprised if she gives more attention to them than her book.”

“Then you know all, Blanche?”

“I know,” said Blanche, “let’s see—­I know the partiklar style of—­ahem!—­fool you was, and expected no better.  Good by.”  And, gliding like a lovely and innocent milk snake out of his grasp, she slipped away.

To the pleasant ripple of waves, the sound of music and light voices, the yellow midsummer moon again rose over Greyport.  It looked upon formless masses of rock and shrubbery, wide spaces of lawn and beach, and a shimmering expanse of water.  It singled out particular objects,—­a white sail in shore, a crystal globe upon the lawn, and flashed upon something held between the teeth of a crouching figure scaling the low wall of Cliffwood Lodge.  Then, as a man and woman passed out from under the shadows of the foliage into the open moonlight of the garden path, the figure leaped from the wall, and stood erect and waiting in the shadow.

It was the figure of an old man, with rolling eyes, his trembling hand grasping a long, keen knife,—­a figure more pitiable than pitiless, more pathetic than terrible.  But the next moment the knife was stricken from his hand, and he struggled in the firm grasp of another figure that apparently sprang from the wall beside him.

“D—­n you, Masterman!” cried the old man, hoarsely; “give me fair play, and I’ll kill you yet!”

“Which my name is Yuba Bill,” said Bill, quietly, “and it’s time this d—­n fooling was stopped.”

The old man glared in Bill’s face savagely.  “I know you.  You’re one of Masterman’s friends,—­d—­n you,—­let me go till I cut his heart out,—­let me go!  Where is my Mary?—­where is my wife?—­there she is! there!—­there!—­there!  Mary!” He would have screamed, but Bill placed his powerful hand upon his mouth, as he turned in the direction of the old man’s glance.  Distinct in the moonlight the figures of Islington and Blanche, arm in arm, stood out upon the garden path.