“The second morning after my return,” she answered.

“I want to know,” he pursued, “why it was kept secret from me, and I want to know quick.”

“Secret?” she echoed, with a wave of her hand to indicate the noise which the workmen were making.

“Upon whose authority was it begun?”

“Mine.  Who else could give it?”

“Look here,” he said, advancing toward her, “don’t you try to fool me!  You haven’t done all this by yourself.  Who hired these workmen?”

Remembering her first interview with him, she rose quickly before he could come near her.  “Mr. Louden made most of the arrangements for me,” she replied, quietly, “before he went away.  He will take charge of everything when he returns.  You haven’t forgotten that I told you I intended to place my affairs in his hands?”

He had started forward, but at this he stopped and stared at her inarticulately.

“You remember?” she said, her hands resting negligently upon the back of the chair.  “Surely you remember?”

She was not in the least afraid of him, but coolly watchful of him.  This had been her habit with him since her return.  She had seen little of him, except at table, when he was usually grimly laconic, though now and then she would hear him joking heavily with Sam Warden in the yard, or, with evidently humorous intent, groaning at Mamie over Eugene’s health; but it had not escaped Ariel that he was, on his part, watchful of herself, and upon his guard with a wariness in which she was sometimes surprised to believe that she saw an almost haggard apprehension.

He did not answer her question, and it seemed to her, as she continued steadily to meet his hot eyes, that he was trying to hold himself under some measure of control; and a vain effort it proved.

“You go back to my house!” he burst out, shouting hoarsely.  “You get back there!  You stay there!”

“No,” she said, moving between him and the door.  “Mamie and I are going for a drive.”

“You go back to my house!” He followed her, waving an arm fiercely at her.  “Don’t you come around here trying to run over me!  You talk about your `affairs’!  All you’ve got on earth is this two-for-a-nickel old shack over your head and a bushel-basket of distillery stock that you can sell by the pound for old paper!” He threw the words in her face, the bull-bass voice seamed and cracked with falsetto.  “Old paper, old rags, old iron, bottles, old clothes!  You talk about your affairs!  Who are you?  Rothschild?  You haven’t got any affairs!”

Not a look, not a word, not a motion of his escaped her in all the fury of sound and gesture in which he seemed fairly to envelop himself; least of all did that shaking of his—­the quivering of jaw and temple, the tumultuous agitation of his hands —­evade her watchfulness.

“When did you find this out?” she said, very quickly.  “After you became administrator?”