John went on. "I certainly had a nightmare last night. Thought a woman
in a long, shining dress came into my room and tried to stab me. This
morning I found that a glass on my bed-table was overturned and
broken, and, by George, I'd cut my wrist on it."

He showed a jagged cut on his wrist. "Take a look, Doctor Eric."

Eric looked at the cut, carefully. "Not bad, but you might have bled
to death, had it been a quarter of an inch to the left. If you like,
I'll fix it up a bit for you after breakfast."

Eric's voice was calm enough, but his pulse was pounding, his heart
sick. All morning he rode through the countryside adjoining the
Dickerson estate, but he let the mare go as she liked and where she
liked, for his mind was busy with the events of the hour before dawn.
He knew that the slash on his brother's wrist was made by steel, not
glass. Yet when the ride was over, he could not bring himself to tell
John of Suzanne's visit.

"She must have been sleep-walking, though I can't account for the way
she was decked out. I've always thought Suzanne extremely modest in
her dress, certainly not inclined to load herself with jewelry. And
those boots! John must get them today and destroy them, as he said.
Silly, perhaps, but----" His thoughts went on and on, always returning
to the Medici boots, in spite of himself.

Eric came back from his ride at eleven o'clock, with as troubled a
mind as when he began it. He almost feared to see Suzanne at lunch.
When he did meet her with John and Mr. Erskine on the cool, shaded
porch where they lunched, he saw there was nothing to fear. The
amorous, clinging woman of the hour before dawn was not there at all.
There was only the Suzanne whom Eric knew and loved as a sister.

Here, again, was their merry little Suzanne, somewhat spoiled by her
husband, it is true, but a Suzanne sweetly feminine, almost childish
in a crisp, white frock and little, low-heeled sandals. Their talk was
lazily pleasant -- of tennis honors and horses, of the prize delphiniums
in the garden, of the tiny maltese kitten which Suzanne had brought up
from the stables late that morning and installed in a pink-bowed

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