III
It was four o clock, and the Baron's boarders were drinking their afternoon coffee, drawn up in a circle round the hall fire. All but Campbell, who had carried his cup away to a side-table, and, with a book open before him, appeared to be reading assiduously. In reality he could not follow a line of what he read; he could not keep his thoughts from Miss Thayer. What Mayne had told him was germinating in his mind. Knowing his friend as he did, he could not on reflection doubt his word. In spite of much superficial cynicism, Mayne was incapable of speaking lightly of any young girl without good cause. It now seemed to Campbell that, instead of exaggerating the case, Mayne had probably understated it. The girl repelled him to-day as much as she had charmed him yesterday. He asked himself with horror, what had she not already known, seen, permitted? When now and again his eyes travelled over, perforce, to where she sat, her red head leaning against Miss Dodge's knee, seeming to attract and concentrate all the glow of the fire, his forehead set itself in frowns, and he returned with an increased sense of irritation to his book.
"I'm just sizzling up, Nannie," Miss Thayer presently complained, in her child-like, drawling little way; "this fire is too hot for anything." She rose and shook straight her loose tea-gown, a marvellous garment created in Paris, which would have accused a duchess of wilful extravagance. She stood smiling round a moment, pulling on and off with her right hand the big diamond ring which decorated the left. At the sound of her voice Campbell had looked up; now his cold unfriendly eyes en-countered
