My heart was beating rapidly. I did not know what to think nor what to do. This ignominious dismissal afforded an experience new to me. I was humiliated, mortified, but above all, wildly angry. How far I had gone on my homeward journey I cannot say, when the sound of quickly pattering footsteps intruded upon my wild reverie. I stopped, turned, and there was Ah Tsong almost at my heels. “Blinga chit flom lilly missee,” he said, and held the note toward me. I hesitated, glaring at him in a way that must have been very unpleasant; but recovering myself I tore open the envelope, and read the following note, written in pencil and very shakily: MR. KNOX. Please forgive him. If you knew what we have suffered from Senor Don Juan Menendez, I know you would forgive him. Please, for my sake. YSOLA CAMBER. The Chinaman was watching me, that strangely pathetic expression in his eyes, and: “Tell your mistress that I quite understand and will write to her,” I said. “Hoi, hoi.” Ah Tsong turned, and ran swiftly off, as I pursued my way back to Cray’s Folly in a mood which I shall not attempt to describe. CHAPTER XV UNREST I sat in Paul Harley’s room. Luncheon was over, and although, as on the previous day, it had been a perfect repast, perfectly served, the sense of tension which I had experienced throughout the meal had made me horribly ill at ease. That shadow of which I have spoken elsewhere seemed to have become almost palpable. In vain I had ascribed it to a morbid imagination: persistently it lingered. Madame de Stämer’s gaiety rang more false than ever. She twirled the rings upon her slender fingers and shot little enquiring glances all around the table. This spirit of unrest, from wherever it arose, had communicated itself to everybody. Madame’s several bon mots one and all were failures. She delivered them without conviction like an amateur repeating lines learned by heart. The Colonel was unusually silent, eating little but drinking much. There was something unreal, almost ghastly, about the whole affair; and when at last Madame de Stämer retired, bearing Val Beverley with her, I felt certain that the Colonel would make some communication to us. If ever knowledge of portentous evil were written upon a man’s face it was written upon his, as he sat there at the head of the table, staring straightly before him. However: “Gentlemen,” he said, “if your enquiries here have led to no result of, shall I say, a tangible character, at least I feel sure that you must have realized one thing.” Harley stared at him sternly. “I have realized, Colonel Menendez,” he replied, “that something is pending.” “Ah!” murmured the Colonel, and he clutched the edge of the table with his strong brown hands. “But,” continued my friend, “I have realized something more. You have asked for my aid, and I am here. Now you have deliberately tied my hands.” “What do you mean, sir?” asked the other, softly.