10

Lucy was right; he could hear the light, stuffless sound of footsteps sinking into the dead leaves which still, on this spring night, lay thickly spread on the path.

“Only happy lovers like you and me,” he whispered huskily. “They’re not troubling about us—why trouble about them?”

But the girl was frightened. “For God’s sake, go away, Mr. Cheale!” she pleaded in a terrified whisper.

“One kiss more, Lucy. Only one kiss more——”

But she lay inertly in his arms, all her senses absorbed in listening. How different from only fifty seconds ago!

“Lucy,” he whispered, “Lucy? We can’t part like this, to-night—the first time my goddess has yielded me her lips.”

Though full of nervous terror, she was moved by the real feeling in his voice.

“I’ll go and see who it is,” she muttered in his ear. “You stop where you are.”

“Promise to come back!”

For only answer she took up his thin right hand and laid it against her cheek; and then she crept quickly away, moving almost soundlessly along, for she knew every turn of the little wood.

At last she came back, panting a little.

“Who was it?” he whispered eagerly.

“I don’t know. They’re gone now. But I’ve not a minute left.”

He could hear by her voice that she was anxious, preoccupied, and with the strange, dangerous power he possessed of seeing into a woman’s mind he knew that she had not told the truth—that she was well aware of the identity of those other haunters of the enchanted wood. But he had no wish to share her knowledge. The good folk of Terriford, who meant so much to Lucy Warren, meant less than nothing to Guy Cheale.

“You and that tiresome old cook go up to bed as soon as you come in, don’t you?” he asked suddenly.

“Yes, we do,” she replied hesitatingly, knowing well, as she would have expressed it to herself, what he was after.

11“If I give you twenty minutes,” he whispered caressingly, “it will be quite safe for you to let me 

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