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Colin stood, and the girl clung to him, silent and quivering.

Very softly he ascended the steps, crossed the porch, and gently disengaging her arms set his burden down within the doorway, her bare feet on the dry softness of a rug.

Then he bent over Marco. He had hit him hard--too hard, and well he knew it. A thin, scarlet trickle was running from a corner of the flaccid mouth. He was not at all surprised when, lifting the albino's shoulders, the head dropped back with the limpness of a broken stick held together by a few torn fibers. He felt for Marco's heart and examined his neck with inquiring fingers. Then he laid him back and rose.

From the dead man he looked up to his mad Dusk Lady. She was watching him with dark, wondering eyes. Her wet, green gown clung to limbs and body, close as the green bark of a young tree, and the thick curls of her hair glistened black and shining.

Like some sorrowful spirit of the storm-torn forest she stood there, and Colin was ashamed before her. He, who had come to protect and guard her, had been betrayed by his temper and thereby involved them in Heaven only knew what entanglements.

"My lord, why do you look so sad and stern? Have I given you offense?"

"You! Poor child, no, 'tis myself has offended--but how, never mind. Go to your room, little lady, and dress yourself so that I may take you to a kinder place. At least, Marco will trouble you no more the night. He is--hurt."

"Hurt? Is he not dead?"

She said it so simply and with so childlike an inflection of disappointment that the words took Colin aback.

"Never mind that!" he retorted almost sharply. "Never mind that! Go dress yourself dry and warm, and put on a coat, if you have one, against the rain."

Frowning, she looked down at her one inadequate but becoming garment.

"I owe you gentle obedience, my lord, but I had vowed never to don robes of his giving. Must I, then, break my solemn vow?"

"Indeed, and I fear you must. They'll not let us on the train otherwise."

She meditated a moment longer. Then, "I will put on me a coat, since my lord desires it," and she started for the stair.

Remembering Genghis Khan, O'Hara followed. She led him straight to the door at the end of the second floor hall, where he had first seen her. It stood open, and as she entered he looked in over her shoulder.

He saw a large bedroom, well, even luxuriously furnished. Clearly, careless though he might be of her welfare in other respects, Reed did not begrudge money spent on his daughter's immediate surroundings.

Having made sure that the great ape was lurking nowhere in the room, and having closed the window above a rain-flooded Persian rug, O'Hara left his charge alone. She had said nothing in that while, only watched hum with attentive eyes that followed every move with quiet interest, and he himself had little mind for conversation.

But in the act of closing her door he turned back. "Where's the phone?" said he.

"The--the phone?"

"The telephone--the box they talk through when a bell rings," explained O'Hara patiently.

She shook her head, with a look of perplexed distress that was to him unutterably pathetic. Dusk Lady indeed, ever wandering through the twilight of a darkened mind!

"I'll find it myself," said he hastily, and closed the door.

Down the stairs he went, heavy and slow, weighed down by a great sickness of the spirit. Despite Reed's assurance, despite the dictates of everyday reason, O'Hara had until the last hour been possessed of a secret, unvoiced hope that this girl, the glamour of whose elfin personality had drawn him as no woman ever drew him before, might prove to be a sane and normal being. That hope was dead now--dead as the unlucky albino slain in his master's doorway. And for the sake of a mad girl he had committed a crime which in his own eyes debased him to the level of any common thug.

Coming at last to the stair foot, he turned and crossed toward the corpse of his poor, repulsive victim. And reaching the threshold of the hall, lo, it was empty!

The body of Marco lay there no more, nor any trace of it.

CHAPTER XIX

Cliona Receives a Guest

"I'LL pay the fare, for I've no tickets." The conductor nodded and counted out change.

"A nasty sort of night, Mr. O'Hara," he observed affably.

Like every man on that short line, he knew half his passengers by sight, many by name, and there was little gossip going about at any of the smaller stations with which he was not acquainted. O'Hara had ridden with him only a few times, but the conductor was familiar with every extraneous fact concerning the Irishman's life at Carpentier. He remembered taking him to Undine earlier in the evening.

Now O'Hara was going in town, where he was said never to go, and accompanied by a mysterious female.

At that hour--eleven thirty--there was not another passenger on the inbound train, so the conductor had plenty of leisure for curious thoughts.

Sitting on the dusty red plush cushions beside his silent Dusk Lady, O'Hara's mind dwelt grimly on the results of his little expedition.

The disappearance of Marco's body troubled him, though he had made no effort to find it. Perhaps in the few moments that he was absent above-stairs, Genghis Khan had carried it away; or it might be that another witness than the girl had seen the slaying of Marco, someone who feared to show himself to this savage invader of Reed's domicile.

One idea he clung to. Whatever he himself had done, Reed's daughter should not spend another night in that house of mysterious human and bestial inhabitants.

She was silent and unquestioning, and he glad of her silence. When she talked his reason continually rebelled against the eccentricities of her speech. Silent, he felt renewed that intangible bond which seemed to exist between his nature and hers. Silent, he could almost forget that between them was also the dread specter of insanity.

"My lord, are you still angered with me?"

At the sound of that low, slightly tremulous voice, O'Hara turned reluctantly to the girl beside him. Toward her when she spoke he felt only gentleness and pity, but he dreaded what she might say, feeling a sort of personal shame in her irrationality.

"I have no anger with you, little lady," he answered kindly.

"Ill pleased, then. Is it because I have told you nothing of my story? One and another person I have told, but they had no--no understanding --"

She broke off, hesitating, and O'Hara groaned inwardly, thinking, "And how should they understand? Poor lass, only God understands foolishness!"

"But you are not as others; you will believe, for you are great and strong and noble, and, moreover, you are bound to me by the Golden Thread."

Colin started.

"Tell me nothing!" he broke in hastily. Then, seeing that she shrank away with a little hurt motion, he added, "We've no time just now for the length of your tale. Do you just wait, little lady, till we are safe at home with my sister. It's but a few minutes now till we get off the train."

"I will wait," she answered with a submissive sigh, and indeed there was no more time for talk. They were then entering the trainshed at the city terminal, and shortly thereafter Colin was hurrying his charge toward the gates and through them, thankful for the late hour and bad weather.

But there were few people about on the train floor, and in any case his fears proved needless. As they went she clung tightly to his arm, shrinking against him.

Green Gables at last, and as Colin, standing in the shelter of the porte-coch?re, paid off his driver, another car swung in and came to a halt just behind the taxi. This midnight motorist was Rhodes, very much belated--for him--but aglow with the results of a successful business day. A few minutes later that satisfaction was obliterated in pure astonishment.

Colin, full of the trouble and excitement of the past few hours, had clean forgotten that by Rhodes he was still supposed to be several thousand miles away, and it was a moment before he could see any reason for his brother-in-law's thunderstruck amazement.

Between that and genuine delight at finding him there, Rhodes did not notice the girl standing so silent at O'Hara's side until the latter, protesting that explanation must come later, called attention to this mysterious companion.

"Little lady," said he, drawing her forward, "here is a good friend of mine who will be a friend to you, too, I am thinking. This is Mr. Anthony Rhodes, the husband of my sister. Tony, Miss Reed has come far and is needing rest."

"My wife will be delighted to welcome you, Miss Reed. Won't you come in?"

For all his cordial tone Rhodes was secretly filled with growing amazement. O'Hara's abrupt and unheralded return had surprised him, but that he should drop out of nowhere at 12:45 A.M. accompanied by a mysterious and lovely female who appeared to be dumb--for she had acknowledged neither the introduction nor his invitation to enter save by a barely perceptible inclination of the head--this struck him as unreasonably queer, and altogether out of keeping with O'Hara's known character.

The latch-key was scarcely withdrawn from the opening door when Cliona appeared at the head of the stairs. She had sent the servants to bed, but herself waited up for her husband. Having planned a pleasant little supper ?deux with her beloved Tony, and having donned for his benefit a most charming neglig閑, all soft white frills and chiffon rues with little gold bands to their edges, her glimpse of two other figures entering after him disconcerted her. Then, recognizing Colin, she came flying down the stairs like a small white whirlwind of welcome.

Colin laughed, holding her off at ands length. "Rues and ribbons," said he, "do you not see that I am dripping from the rain?"

"We have a visitor, Cliona," put in Rhodes in his pleasantest manner. "Miss Reed, let me make you acquainted with my wife."

"Oh," murmured Cliona, peering around her brother, behind whose shielding bulk the visitor seemed to have retreated. "I'm so glad to know you, Miss Reed. Won't you come upstairs and remove your wraps? I see that as usual Colin has scorned to carry an umbrella, and I fear has let you suffer the consequences."

Pause and silence.

"As for that, though, I don't suppose any umbrella would survive a wind such as we have had all evening. We'll have a little supper in a few minutes, and something hot to prevent all three of you from catching your death of cold."

No answer nor acknowledgment from the mysterious one.

"Will you come with me, Miss Reed?"

No response to that, either.

It is rather difficult to continue a flow of cordial welcome addressed to a dark, motionless, speechless figure, whose very presence carries an ominous foreboding. And while her tongue had run lightly enough, Cliona's mind was a confusion of surmise.

Who on earth could this strange woman be? Reed? Reed? Why, that Evan the name of the man who owned the queer stock-farm. And Colin had come openly to Green Gables, which he was not to do till the bungalow affair was finished.

Was the mystery solved, then? And what had this Miss Reed to do with it? Why lead Colin brought her here, in the middle of the night and without warning? When he had phoned her at seven o'clock there had been nothing definite to report, or so he said.

Cliona ceased to speak, and one of those sudden ghastly silences overtook all four of them--the kind that the ideal hostess is supposed never to allow. Cliona wanted to be an ideal hostess--she looked appealingly from Rhodes to Colin.

The latter realized that the time had come when he must begin to explain. With a sigh for the task ahead of him, he turned to his Dusk Lady.

"Take off your coat, child," he said gently. "This is my sister that I told you of. You'll find only kindness in this house."

Cliona and Tony looked at her, fascinated. The situation had passed beyond conventional handling. There was something here which only Colin understood.

They beheld a magnolia pale face, with crimson lips and starry, frightened eyes, but no words came from her.

"Oh!" cried Cliona again involuntarily, and Rhodes echoed the exclamation in his mind. Where had Colin discovered this girl with her unearthly beauty and equally unearthly manner? In South America? Spanish, perhaps? She looked like a Latin of some sort.

"Let me take your things," offered Cliona, realizing that the girl's coat was as wet as Colin's own.

"Shall I remove them here?"

The mysterious Miss Reed asked the question of O'Hara, as though she regarded him as the arbiter of even her smallest acts.

"You may as well." He took off his own ulster and thoughtfully flung it over the umbrella-stand in the entry. It was too wet for Cliona's hall-rack.

Miss Reed wore no hat, only the hood of her coat. Unfastening the coat itself, she slipped lithely out of it, leaving it in O'Hara's hands.

A startled and simultaneous gasp issued from three mouths at once, but Colin's was the most expressive. Saints above, he was glad there had been no occasion for her to remove that coat in the train or station!

Save that her feet were no longer bare, there stood his Dusk Lady exactly as she had stood upon the rug in Reed's entrance-hall while he stooped to examine Marco's body. Her green gown, wet as ever, clung to body and limbs in the revealing lines of a thin bathing suit. Her dark hair hung in the same beautiful but informal curls, and for the first time Colin was painfully aware of those worn places in her gown through which bare limbs shone whitely.

Her eyes darted from one face to another of those about her, frightened, questioning. They were all, even her "lord," looking at her in the strange way that no one had ever regarded her before the beginning of her long time of sadness. In the place of her nativity, no such tremendous and burdensome value was laid on mere costume as "civilization" places there, and little indeed had been her chance to learn. In the house at Undine she had been kept close and guarded.

Something was wrong. What was it?

Glancing at his sister's flushed, astounded face, O'Hara wished with all his heart that he had not so much--so very much explaining ahead of him. To introduce a crazed and half-clad maiden and the fact that he was in his own opinion a murderer, all in the same hour--well --