Edward Floyd-Rosney in some sort habitually confused cause and effect. In his normal entourage he mistook the swift potencies of his wealth, waiting on his will, like a conjurer’s magic, for an individual endowment of ability. He had great faith in his management. In every group of business men with whom his affairs brought him in contact his financial weight gave him a predominance and an influence which flattered his vanity, and which he interpreted as personal tribute, and yet he did not disassociate in his mind his identity from his income. His wealth was an integral part of him, one of the many great values attached to his personality—he felt that he was wise and witty, capable and coercive. He addressed himself to the manipulation of a difficult situation with a certainty of success that gave a momentum to the force with which his money carried all before him. So rarely had he been placed on a level with other men, in a position in which wealth and influence were inoperative, that he had had scant opportunities to appraise his own mental processes—his judgment, his initiative, his powers of ratiocination.

He did not feel like a fool when Randal Ducie walked deliberately into the hall of his fathers, staring in responsive surprise to see the Floyd-Rosneys still lingering there. That admission was impossible to Floyd-Rosney’s temperament. He felt as if contemplating some revulsion of nature. He had seen this man among the crowd, boarding the steamer, and lo, here he was again, on dry land and the boat now miles distant.

He stood stultified, all his plans for the avoidance of Ducie strangely dislocated and set at naught by the unexpected falling out of events.

He was not calculated to bear tamely any crossing of his will, and the blood began to throb heavily in his temples with the realization that his wife had understood his clumsy maneuver, of which she was the subject, and witnessed its ludicrous discomfiture. His pride would not suffer him to glance toward her, where she sat perched up on the grand staircase, in the attitude of a coquettish girl. He curtly addressed Ducie:

“Thought you were gone!”

“No,” said Ducie, almost interrogatively, as to why this conclusion.

Floyd-Rosney responded to the intonation.

“I saw you going down to the landing.”

“To see my brother off.”

“Oh,—ah——”

What more obvious—what more natural? The one resumed his interrupted journey, and the other was to take up his usual course of life. That is, thought Floyd-Rosney, if this one is Randal Ducie. But, for some reason, they might have reversed the program, and this is the other one.

Floyd-Rosney struggled almost visibly for his wonted dominance, but Ducie had naught at stake on his favor, naught to give or to lose, and his manner was singularly composed and inexpressive—too well bred to even permit the fear of counter questions as to why they lingered here and let the steamer leave without them. Perhaps, he felt such inquiries intrusive, for, after a moment, he turned away, and Floyd-Rosney still confronted him with eyes round and astonished and his face a flushed and uneasy mask of discomfiture.

Momentarily at a loss how to dispose of himself, Ducie looked about the apartment, devoid of chairs or any furniture, and, finally, resorted to the staircase, taking up a position on one of the lower steps. Perhaps, had he known that the Floyd-Rosneys were within he would have lingered outside. But dignity forbade a retreat, although his disinclination for their society was commensurate with Floyd-Rosney’s aversion to him and his brother. For his life Floyd-Rosney, still staring, could not decide which of the twain he had here, and Paula, with a perverse relish of his quandary, perceived and enjoyed his dilemma. Although he was aware she could discern the difference her manner afforded him no clew, as she sat silent and intentionally looking very pretty, to her husband’s indignation, as he noted the grace of her studied attitude, her face held to inexpressive serenity, little in accord with the tumult of vexation the detention had occasioned her.

Floyd-Rosney could not restrain his questions. Perhaps they might pass with Ducie as idle curiosity, although with Paula he had now no disguise.

“You are waiting——?”

“For my horse,” returned Ducie, with the accent of surprise. “There was no room in the phaeton for me, as Colonel Kenwynton and Major Lacey concluded to accompany the doctor and his patient to the sanatorium.”

So this was Randal Ducie, and the brother had resumed his journey down the river.

“The doctor promised to send the horse back for me——” he paused a moment. “I hope he will send the phaeton, too, for if you have made no other arrangements——” Once more he paused blankly—it seemed so strange that Floyd-Rosney should allow himself to be marooned here in this wise. “If you have made no other arrangements it will give me pleasure to drive you to the station near Glenrose.”

“We are due at the sanatorium for the insane, I think,” cried Paula, with her little fleering laugh, her chin thrust up in her satirical wont.

Floyd-Rosney, sore bestead and amazed by her manner, made a desperate effort to recover his composure.

“Oh, I sent a telegram by one of the passengers to be transmitted when the boat touches at the landing at Volney, and this will bring an automobile here for my family.”

“If the passenger does not forget to send it, or if, when the boat touches he is not asleep, after his vigils here, or if he is not taking a walk, or eating his lunch, or, like Baal of old, otherwise engaged, when we, too, may cry Baal, Baal, unavailingly. For my part, I accept your offer, Mr. Ducie, if your vehicle comes first; if not I hope you will take a seat in the automobile with us.”

“That is a compact,” said Ducie graciously.

Floyd-Rosney felt assured that this was Randal. He was more suave than his brother—or was it that old associations still had power to gentle his temper? He could not understand his wife’s revolt. Now and again he looked at her with an unconscious inquiry in his eyes. So little was he accustomed to subject his own actions to criticism that it did not occur to him that he had gone too far. The worm had turned, seeming unaware how lowly and helpless was its estate. He had all the sentiment of grinding it under his heel, as he said loftily:

“We shall have no need to impose upon you, Mr. Ducie. Our own conveyance will be here in ample time,”—then, like a jaw-breaker—“Thanks.”

“I march with the first detachment,” declared Paula hardily. “I shall accept your offer of transportation, Mr. Ducie, if the auto does not come first.”

Floyd-Rosney thought this must surely be Adrian Ducie, and not his brother. For some reason of their own they must have exchanged their missions, and Randal had gone down the river, leaving his brother here. For she—a stickler on small points of the appropriate—could never say this if it were her old lover. Her sense of decorum, her respect for her husband, her habitual exercise of good taste would alike forbid the suggestion. Doubtless, it was Adrian Ducie.

“I don’t think an automobile will come,” remarked Ducie. “The roads are very rough between here and Volney.”

Paula’s next words seemed to mend the matter a trifle in Floyd-Rosney’s estimation.

“I think we have all had enough of Duciehurst for one time! I would not risk remaining here, as evening closes in, for any consideration. All the riverside harpies will be flocking here when this story of treasure trove is bruited abroad. The old place will be fairly torn stone from stone, and there will be horrible orgies of strife and bloodshed. There ought to be a guard set, though there is nothing now to guard.”

“Do you suppose Captain Treherne’s story of the river pirates was all fact or was partly the effect of his hallucination?” Ducie asked.

“The cords he was bound with were pretty circumstantial evidence,” said Mrs. Floyd-Rosney, not waiting, as usual, for her husband’s word, but taking the lead in the conversation with aplomb and vivacity—he remembered scornfully that before her marriage she had been accounted in social circles intellectual, a bel esprit among the frivols.

“The gag failed of its function of silence,” she continued, “it told the whole story. You would have known that it was stern truth if you had seen it.”

Floyd-Rosney vacillated once more.

“This must be Randal Ducie,” he thought, “for Adrian was present at the liberation of Captain Treherne—indeed, he was with the group searching among the series of ruined vacant apartments when the prisoner was discovered.”

“The finding of the box was very singular,” speculated Ducie, “the closest imaginable shave. It was just as possible to one of the parties on the verge of discovery as the other.”

He was in that uneasy, disconcerted state of mind usual with a stranger present at a family discord which he feels, yet must not obviously perceive and cannot altogether ignore.

“It seems the hand of fate,” said Paula.

“I went up to the third story this morning and looked at the place,” remarked Randal. “I really don’t see how, without tools, you contrived to wrench the heavy washboard away, and get at the bricks and the interior of the capital of the pilaster.”

“It seems a feat more in keeping with Miss Dean,” suggested Floyd-Rosney, “she has such a splendid physique.”

“Hilda is as strong as a boy,” declared Paula. “She does ‘the athletic’—affects very boyish manners, don’t you think?” she added, addressing Ducie directly.

There were few propositions which either of the Floyd-Rosneys could put forth with which Randal Ducie would not have agreed, so eager was he to close the incident without awkward friction. To let the malapropos encounter pass without result was the instinct of his good breeding. But, upon this direct challenge, he felt that he could not annul his individuality, his convictions.

“Why, not at all boyish,” he said. “On the contrary, I think her manners are most feminine in their fascination. Did you notice that the old blind Major was having the time of his life?”

Floyd-Rosney, without the possibility of seating himself unless he, too, resorted to the stair, was pacing slowly back and forth, his head bent low, his hands lightly clasped behind him. Now and again he sent forth a keenly observant glance at the two disposed on the stair, like a couple of young people sitting out a dance at a crowded evening function.

“Hildegarde will flirt with anything or anybody when good material cannot be had,” said Mrs. Floyd-Rosney, with a manner of vague discomfiture.

“Well, that is scarcely fair to my brother,” said Randal. He would not let this pass.

“Oh, I should judge his flirting days are over,” cried Paula, wilfully flippant. “He is as crusty as a bear with a sore head.”

“Or a sore heart,” said Randal, thinking of Adrian’s long exile, and his hard fate, ousted from his home and fortune; then he could have bitten his tongue out, realizing the sentimental significance of the words. Still one cannot play with fire without burning one’s fingers, and there are always embers among the ashes of an old flame.

For her life Paula could but look conscious with the eyes of both men on her face.

“He doesn’t seem an exponent of a sore heart.” She stumbled inexcusably in her clumsy embarrassment. There was an awkward silence. The implication that Adrian might be representative passed as untenable, and the subject of hearts was eschewed thereafter.

“Miss Dean has been quite famous as a beauty and belle in her brief career,” Mr. Floyd-Rosney deigned to contribute to the conversation.

“She is wonderfully attractive—so original and interesting,” said Ducie warmly.

“It seems to me Hilda carries her principal assets in her face,” said Mrs. Floyd-Rosney. “They say she wouldn’t learn a thing at the convent—and what is worse, she feels no lack.”

“What does any woman learn?” demanded Floyd-Rosney iconoclastically, “and what does any woman’s education signify? A mosaic of worthless smattering, expensive to acquire, and impossible to apply. Miss Dean lacks nothing in lacking this equipment.”

Paula sat affronted and indignant. In her husband’s sweeping assertion he had not had the courtesy to except her, and it was hardly admissible for Ducie to repair the omission. He could only carry the proposition further and make it general, and his tact seized the opportunity.

“I think that might be said of the youth of both sexes. The fakir, with his learning made-easy, is the foible of the age and its prototype extends to business methods—the get-rich-quick opportunities match the education-while-you-wait, and the art, reduced to a smudge with a thumb, and the ballads of a country—the voice of the heart of the people, superseded by ragtime.”

But Paula would not be appeased.

“If women are constitutionally idiots and cannot be taught,” she cried, “they ought not to be responsible for folly. That is a charter wide as the winds.”

“Not at all—not at all,” said her husband dogmatically. But how he would have reconciled the variant dicta of incapacity and accountability must remain a matter of conjecture, for there came suddenly on the air the iterative sound of the swift beat of hoofs and, through the open door in another moment, was visible a double phaËton drawn by a glossy, spirited blood bay, brought with difficulty to a pause and lifting alternately his small forefeet with the ardor of motion, even when the pressure on the bit in his mouth constrained his eager activity and brought him to a halt.

“I have won out,” said Ducie genially. Since it had awkwardly fallen to his lot to offer civilities to these people he did it with a very pretty grace. “I shall be glad to see you and your family to the station, Mr. Floyd-Rosney.”

Floyd-Rosney’s eyes were on the space beyond the portico.

“That’s a good horse you have,” he remarked seriously.

“Yes—before I bought him he was on the turf,—winner in several events.”

“You don’t often see such an animal in private use,” said Floyd-Rosney, unbending a trifle. He, too, loved a good horse for its own sake.

“True, but I am located at a considerable distance from the plantations I lease, and going to and fro he is of special use to me. I can’t stand a slow way of getting through the world, and the roads won’t admit of an auto.”

The two men were quite unconstrained for the moment in the natural interest of a subject foreign to their difficult mutual relations. Randal Ducie’s head was thrown up, his eyes glowed; he was looking at the horse with a sort of glad admiration—an expression which Paula well remembered. Floyd-Rosney’s eyes narrowed as they scanned successively the points of the fine animal, his own face calm, patronizing, approving. Neither of them, for the moment, was thinking of her. She had followed them out upon the wide stone portico and stood in the sun, her head tilted a trifle that her broad hat of taupe velvet might shade her eyes. She brought herself potently into the foreground, seizing the fact that Randal was unincumbered with baggage of any sort.

“Where is the treasure trove?” she cried. “Surely you are not going to leave it in the ruins of this old mansion!”

Her husband flashed at her a glance of reproof which would once have silenced her, abashed to the ground. Now she repeated her words, wondering to feel so composed, so possessed of all her faculties. Without a conscious effort of observation the details of the scene were registered in her mind unbefogged by her wonted bewilderment in her husband’s disapproval. She even noticed the groom who had driven the vehicle back from the livery stable—no colored servant, but a carrot-headed youth, with jockey boots, riding breeches, a long freckled face, and small red-lidded eyes, very close together, gazing at Ducie with a keen intentness as she asked the question. The fame of the discovery must have been bruited abroad already, and she vaguely wondered at this, for, as yet, no one on land knew the facts, except the alienist and his party, safely housed at the sanatorium.

“The chest of valuables found here last night?” replied Ducie. “Why, I haven’t it. My brother took it on the boat in his suitcase, and, before nightfall, it will be in one of the banks in Vicksburg.”

Floyd-Rosney, thrown out of all his reckonings by the unaccountable behavior of his wife, spoke at random, more to obviate its effects than with any valid intendment.

“I saw the box opened,” he said; “only family jewels and a lot of gold coin and papers, but I should think, from the pretensions of this place, there must have been elaborate table services of silver, perhaps of gold plate. Were any such appurtenances hidden, do you know, and recovered?”

Ducie shook his head. “I know nothing of such ware. It may be, or it may not be here. The absence of the papers brought out the story of the hiding of the family diamonds, else the box would have remained in the capital of the pilaster, where my uncle left it, till the crack of doom.”

Paula never understood the impulse that possessed her. Boldly, in the presence of her husband, she took from her dainty mesh bag a small key set with rubies and one large diamond.

“Your brother carelessly left one of the Ducie jewels on the table and I picked it up. I am so glad I remembered to restore it to you. It should have been in your possession long ago.”

Floyd-Rosney was watching her like a hawk, and she began to quail before his eyes. Oh, why had she not remembered that he was a connoisseur in bijouterie and bric-À-brac of many sorts and would detect instantly, at a glance, the modern fashion and comparatively slight value of the trinket. More than all, why had she not reckoned on the fact that Randal Ducie was no actor. Who could fail to interpret the surprised recognition in his eyes, his gentle upbraiding look before the associations thus ruthlessly summoned? It was as if some magic had materialized all the tender poignancy of first love, all his winged hopes, all the heartbreak of a cruel disappointment crystallized in this scintillating bauble in his hand. He glanced from it to her, then back at the flashing stones, red as his heart’s blood. He looked so wounded, so passive, as if content to succumb to a blow which he was too generous, too magnanimous to return in kind.

And he said never a word.

She felt that her face was flaring scarlet; the hot tears were smitten into her eyes. She could not speak, and, for a long moment neither of the two men moved, although the horse, restive and eager to be off, plunged now and again, almost lifting from his feet the groom at his head, still swinging at the bit, but staring, as if resolved into eyes, at the group on the piazza.

“It is the key to something of value”—she found her voice suddenly—“or it would never have been so charmingly decorated. I hope it will unlock all the doors shut against you,” she concluded with a little bow.

“Thank you,” he said formally. And he said no more.

“And now shall we go?” asked Floyd-Rosney curtly.

There being only four places, the gentlemen occupying the front seats, Mrs. Floyd-Rosney, the nurse and the baby the others, there was no room for the groom, and Ducie, gathering up the reins preparatory to driving, directed him to return to the livery stable on one of the cotton wagons which would be starting in an hour or so. The ill-looking fellow touched his cap, loosed the bit and the horse sprang away with an action so fine, so well sustained, that Floyd-Rosney’s brow cleared. The pleasure of the moment was something.

“What will you take for him?” he asked, quite human for the nonce.

“Not for sale. Couldn’t spare him,” Ducie responded, the reins wound about his forearms, all his strength requisite to hold the abounding vitality and eagerness of the animal to the trot, the hoofs falling with the precision of machinery, mile after mile.

Only once did the pace falter. Suddenly the animal plunged. A man dashed out from the Cherokee rose hedge that bordered the high-way and clutched the bit. With the momentum of his pace the horse swung him off his feet, and frightened and swerving from the road, reared high. As the forefeet crashed to the ground once more with a sharp impact the man was thrown sprawling to the roadside, and the horse was a mile away before the occupants of the vehicle knew exactly what had happened.

“Oh,—oh——” cried Paula, “was the man hurt? What did he want?”

“No good,” said her husband grimly.

“Oh, oughtn’t we go back and see what we have done?” She could scarcely speak with the wind of their transit blowing the words down her throat. “Oh, I know Mr. Floyd-Rosney won’t, but, Randal, don’t you think we ought?”

“Hardly,” said Randal.

Floyd-Rosney’s head slowly turned, and his slumberous eyes, with a bated fury smoldering in their depths, looked their sneering triumph at his wife.

“That crack,—was it——?” he asked of Randal.

“A pistol ball, I think. I saw—I thought I saw a puff of smoke from the Cherokee hedge. My head feels hot yet. For simple curiosity look at my hat.”

Floyd-Rosney removed the hat from the head of the man by him. He turned it in his hand and his eyes glittered. Then he held it out for Ducie’s observation.

There was a small orifice on one side, and a corresponding rift, higher, on the other. Evidently, the ball had passed through.

“Thirty caliber, I should judge,” Floyd-Rosney ventured.

“Looks so?” Randal assented.

“But why—why——” exclaimed Paula, “should Randal be shot at—he might have been killed—oh, any of us might have been killed!”

“The story of the treasure trove—out already, I suppose,” suggested Floyd-Rosney.

“And it is believed that I have it now in my possession, carrying it to a place of safety,” said Ducie.

“Just as well for you to get to town as speedily as possible,” remarked Floyd-Rosney.

To have escaped an attempt at highway robbery is not an agreeable sensation, however futile and ill advised the enterprise. This possibility had not occurred to Floyd-Rosney, yet he perceived its logic. It was obvious that the rich find of gold and jewels must be removed from Duciehurst, and by whom more probably than their owner? Doubtless, the miscreants had expected Ducie to be accompanied only by the groom, perhaps a party to the conspiracy, and albeit this supposition had gone awry, there was only one unarmed man beside himself to contend against a possible second attack. Floyd-Rosney would be glad to be rid of Ducie on every account. No such awkward association had ever befallen him, significant at every turn. But, when actual physical danger to himself and his family was involved in sitting beside him, he felt all other objections frivolous indeed, and it was in the nature of a rescue when the fast horse drew up beside the platform of the little station near Glenrose, where the train was already standing.

The congÉ was of the briefest, although Randal omitted no observance which a courteous voluntary host might have affected. He left the horse in charge of an idler about the station, assisted Mrs. Floyd-Rosney into the coach, where, to her husband’s satisfaction, the stateroom was vacant and they might thus be spared the presence of the vulgar horde of travelers. He shook hands with both husband and wife, only leaving the train as it glided off. Paula, looking from her window, had her last glimpse of him, standing on the platform, courteously lifting his hat in farewell. She had a wild, unreasoning protest against the parting, her eyes looked a mute appeal, and she felt as if delivered to her fate.