Page:Hard-pan; a story of bonanza fortunes (IA hardpanbonanza00bonnrich).pdf/85

Rh Her laughter died, and looking slightly confused, she put out her hand, seized the other door, and drew them together with a bang.

"There!" she said, dropping the catch; "you can't see any more. You 're too curious, in the first place, and you don't believe me, which is worse."

"I 've found out the skeleton in the closet," he said, as they walked back into the front room. "It 's the colonel's passion for jam. I 've heard of a passion for pie running in families, but jam 's something new."

The bare austerity of this bleak apartment seemed to cast a sudden chill over their high spirits. Gault, sitting in the colonel's chair, reverted in thought to the object of his visit, and wondered how he could turn the conversation in the direction he had intended. His preoccupation, and the sense of shame he felt at the mean part he contemplated playing, made him respond to her conversational attempts with dry shortness. She grew constrained and embarrassed, and finally, in a desperate attempt to arrest a total silence, said:

"Don't you like my new cushion? You 've never noticed it!"

The visitor's slow glance moved in the direction indicated, and rested on a cretonne cushion in one of the wicker chairs.

"It 's a perfect beauty," he said, with as