For a moment there was silence between the two. Aylmer's fingers unconsciously wound and unwound a tiny lock of hair in the horse's mane. His eyes travelled over the woman's face and figure appraisingly; his brows contracted into a frown of puzzlement.

He had seen little John Aylmer's mother once before, at her wedding nine years previously. She had been a girl, then, almost a child, and young for her age, which was barely eighteen. Her beauty had been the fresh, innocent beautÉ du diable. She was fair, blue-eyed, with a tendency to fragility. And if report told the truth, her beauty had wasted and her fragility increased through the cruel years of her husband's domination. A bare six months ago she had been freed. Her father's millions had helped her to a separation which English Courts had made a legal one. They had also given her the custody of her one child, the heir to the Aylmer name and the Landon title.

This girl was fair, indeed; her eyes like the sea, her color fresh, her forehead bland and unwrinkled. But she was not the woman whose woes had made copy for a thousand newspapers on both sides of the Atlantic, whose sufferings had roused the storm of execration which had made the honest name of Aylmer a byword of dishonor and reproach. No, this was not his cousin Landon's wife.

And yet?

Feature for feature, line for line, she reminded him of the woman whose daintiness he remembered among the massed decorations of that New York cathedral those years ago.

He sought bluntly for an explanation.

"I, too, am John Aylmer," he said quietly. "Who are you?"

The sudden thrill of surprise with which she clutched the child to her tightened the reins. The gray backed a step; it was as if horse and rider were alike repelled by his question.

She stared at him with a sudden fierce aversion which was undisguised.

"You are Landon's cousin—you?" she cried.

He bowed his head.

"I have that misfortune," he answered quietly.

At the form of his answer a tinge of relief woke in her eyes, but they still watched him with incredulity and suspicion.

"He—he has sent you?" she demanded. "You bring other proposals, or threats?"

He smiled gravely.

"We have shared nothing, except a club, he and I," he explained. "I have not set eyes on him for over a year."

She still watched him alertly, debatingly, and still with mistrust.

"How did you come here, and why?" she asked.

"I am a member of the Tent Club," he answered. "I am in garrison at Gibraltar. I could not get leave till yesterday afternoon and I waited in Tangier to accompany Captain Rattier, whose ship is in harbor. Have I sufficiently explained myself?"

She hesitated.

"You have not seen your cousin for over a year? Perhaps you are in correspondence with him?"

He showed signs of impatience.

"We have not exchanged half a dozen letters in our lives!" he said emphatically.

The lines of her face remained unsoftened. Her fierce grip on the child's shoulder did not relax.

"And this Frenchman—this Captain Rattier?" she asked. "What of him?"

His eyebrows expressed the intensity of his amazement.

"Paul Rattier is my distant cousin," he answered. "No finer gentleman walks the earth." He paused for a moment. "Is it permitted to inquire why you suspect—strangers?"

She did not answer him. An abstraction, real or feigned, seemed to have seized her. She stared out over his head into the distance with unseeing eyes as if she weighed problems, debated evidence, sought conclusions. It was the child who roused her into attention. He laughed, clapped his hands, and shouted.

"Browny!" he clamored in delight. "Browny!"

Aylmer looked round.

Rattier, leading a very melancholy and still bleeding horse, had approached with Despard. Together they were bending over the major's trophy, the dead boar. Behind them Aylmer's horse was hobbling painfully to its feet. Despard looked up and shook an admonishing finger at his acclaimer.

"You young rebel!" he cried. "You want a good smacking for your disobedience!"

He slipped from the saddle as he spoke and led his horse towards them. He laid his hand familiarly on Aylmer's shoulder.

"Hurt?" he asked.

"Not in the least," said Aylmer, and then looked, with a significant lift of the eyebrow, from Despard to the gray horse's rider.

Despard's face showed his own surprise.

"Don't you know each other yet?" he marvelled. "Miss Van Arlen—Captain Aylmer."

Uncertainty gripped Aylmer again. Landon had married a daughter of Jacob Van Arlen, the millionaire. A divorcÉe reverted to her maiden name, but surely not to her maiden title. But Despard had said Miss, most distinctly Miss.

With his usual straightforward instinct to find the nearest way to probe a mystery, he looked at the girl herself. He became aware that her eyes had been upon his face with intentness.

"Yes," she said quietly. "This," she patted the child's shoulder, "is my nephew."

He gave a little sigh of appreciation and, he scarcely knew why, of relief. It was not possible, of course, that this girl, whose whole poise and carriage spoke of resolution and unfettered self-command, could be the woman, broken in health and spirit, who had cowered before her husband's glance, so some of the baser journals had hinted, even when she was seeking and had received the law's protection from him.

And her eyes? They were not of that appealing blue which had shone beneath the bride's deep lashes on that half-forgotten wedding-day. They were blue, indeed, but they met his with something which was akin to defiance.

She did not explain herself, but her glance was that of one who needed no warrant for her demeanor. Her attitude was not one of blatant aggressiveness, but was undoubtedly distrustful.

He looked at the child with renewed interest.

"Your sister is—where?" he asked quickly.

The frown came swiftly back to her forehead.

"You ask me that? Why?" she demanded.

He looked at the boy.

"Naturally I thought she might be with you," he answered. "As an Aylmer I should be glad to meet her."

"Ah!" Her tone was hard and suspicious again. Unconsciously she gripped the child to her again with a fierceness which made him protest.

"You hurt!" he complained. "You hurt, and I want to see the boar."

With a sailor's instinctive fondness for children, Rattier, who had resigned his limping horse into the hands of one of the Arab beaters, turned towards him.

"May I be permitted?" he said simply, and held out his arms. The child made a restless little movement towards him. "He'll show it me!" he cried joyously. "He'll take me!"

Again she reined back, looking from one to the other with patent misgiving.

"No!" she cried sharply. "You shall not touch him, either of you!" She made an appealing gesture towards Despard. "You must see me back to the camp!" she said.

He was smiling with tranquil amusement, a smile which seemed to rouse her to anger.

"Let us go now, at once!" she said, and wheeled her horse.

Despard nodded, but did not dismiss the smile.

"Might I inform you that Aylmer has been my friend since our Sandhurst days, and that I have shared his intimacy with Commandant Rattier for the last five years? I can vouch for them; I really can."

She reined in her horse again and sat looking at all three with doubt still lurking in her eyes. Aylmer met her expression with unrestrained amazement. He found her mistrust of him a conundrum to which there was no answer. The Frenchman's shoulders rose and fell almost imperceptibly. His head was slanted with deferential acquiescence. He laid his hand upon Aylmer's arm.

"Your horse?" he interposed.

He pointed to it and to Absalaam, who had now arrived and was touching the wounds in its flank with delicate, probing fingers. The commandant's gesture seemed to imply that the situation in which they found themselves demanded a tactful retreat, and that here he indicated a dignified one.

Aylmer still hesitated. He saw no reason why he should concur in his own dismissal; the idea grated on him. What had he done?

It was Despard who took the edge of restraint off the situation. He swung himself back into the saddle, and pointed up the hill.

"After all, the thing was a squeak," he allowed. "You are shaken." He turned and nodded slightly to the other two. "I will return and help with the horses; we shall have no other beat to-day."

They smiled, bowed to his companion, and gave him answering nod. They understood. He was going to use the opportunity to sponsor them. Then he would return, and they would have their explanation. They watched him bend towards his companion as they rode away.

"It is almost as if we diffused a contagion, you and I," speculated Rattier as they turned to Absalaam and the horses, but Aylmer made no effort to elaborate the issue. An inexplicable instinct to make the incident a personal rather than a general one had overtaken him. As he watched Despard ride away with his companion, he felt almost as if he were being defrauded. The relations between his cousin and her sister made a tie between Miss Van Arlen and himself; surely, in spite of everything, they were sufficient foundation upon which to found something more than a mere acquaintanceship. In the name of all the other decent-minded, clean-living Aylmers, he might have been allowed to make his and their protest against being held responsible for the knaveries of the head of their house.

So it was with something of dissatisfaction in his aspect that he turned to Absalaam and the wounded horse. The Moor saw it but misunderstood its purport.

"Merely a flesh wound, Sidi," he hastened to assure Aylmer. "A week, perhaps ten days, of rest and he is himself again. A small price to pay for so precious a thing as that child's life."

Aylmer looked at him with tolerant amusement. Absalaam ibn Said had neither harem nor wife; his career had been notoriously one of unrest and adventure. These pious opinions issued oddly from his bachelor lips.

"A small price indeed," he agreed pleasantly, "but a hundred youngsters run risks little less in the SÔk of Tangier every day."

The Moor made a sweeping motion of the hand, as if he suddenly dropped the subject of conversation from a higher plane to a lower.

"The children of the SÔk!" he cried contemptuously. "Khabyles—Arabs—Susi—Riffs! What are they? Little more than vermin; their ranks are replenished all too quickly as it is! But this one! Here we tell a different story, do we not?"

Aylmer halted in his examination of the wounded pastern and looked up. There was something arresting in the Moor's vehemence.

Absalaam caught the look and shrugged his shoulders.

"The Sidi has not visited Tangier for five or six weeks?" he said.

Aylmer nodded. And waited. He had had a good deal of experience of the Moor and his conversational methods. He was aware that the deferring of a climax till it could be launched on a tide of tantalization was the chiefest of them.

"Therefore, Sid' Aylmer," continued the Moor, "you have not heard all the tales which center round this small one's fortunes?"

Aylmer smiled and prepared to give his attention again to his horse. It was left to Rattier to ruin the pyramid of stimulation.

"What tales?" he demanded laconically.

Absalaam's brown eyes met both question and questioner with melancholy—almost, indeed, with scorn. How could one titillate, how could one embroider, how could one work up to a brave display of interest, if bald facts were to be wrung from one at this stage of a tale? He sighed.

"Tales of his wealth and importance, Sidi," he answered, in accents of subjection.

Rattier drew up the monocle which swung from a ribbon at his buttonhole and concentrated his stare upon the Moor.

"Wealth?" he repeated tersely.

Absalaam opened his arms to their widest and held his palms emptily outflung.

"Wealth sufficient to buy all Tangier, all Fez, the whole of Mogrheb al Acksa, if a tenth of the reports be true. His life, therefore? How can one value it!"

He beamed upon them. He had been robbed of his slowly forged culmination, but he had, at least, been able to offer them a surprise.

Aylmer replaced upon the ground the hoof which he had been holding. He looked at the Moor good-humoredly.

"So the gossip mongers of the SÔk credit this infant with riches?" he said. "On what evidence, if any?"

Absalaam made a motion towards the sea.

"In the harbor, when you landed, did you observe a yacht, Sidi—a white boat, with lines of gold at her cutwater and figurehead?"

"Yes."

"That boat lies there at the service of that child. They have taken for him the Villa Eulalia; they have surrounded it with tents of men who are there to do no more than guard his safety; there are servants, horses, donkeys. The Gibraltar steamer brings packets of provisions or what not several times a week. In the town their money flows."

Rattier dropped his eyeglass.

"I think, mon ami," he said slowly, "that gold must be freer with them than gratitude. Were you thanked for what you did? I don't seem to remember it."

Aylmer shook his head.

"That is the mystery," he agreed. "I did little enough, but I was going to be thanked—till I disclosed my name. Then," he shrugged his shoulders, "you saw."

He meditated a minute. Then he burst out laughing.

"I was not allowed even to hold him, and I am not at all sure that I am not his guardian!" he said suddenly.

Rattier's surprise was evident, but he managed to concentrate it in a monosyllable.

"Eh?" he demurred wonderingly.

Aylmer gave an emphatic nod of the head.

"I was coming home from China at the time of the marriage of my cousin Landon with this child's mother. I broke my journey in New York specially to attend it. And Landon, merely as a form, asked me as his kinsman to be a party to his settlement. In certain circumstances, including his death, I was to be one of the trustees for his children."

"And he is dead, this cousin?"

"No, my friend. Merely divorced. Where do I come in—where?"