“Know you! Jaguars!” This was worse and worse. The girl was stark mad. If he had not seen her with the cubs he would have thought it a lie from the word go. “Yes, they do!” she asserted pettishly. “I sing--like this--and they come. I can make them go away, too. Even Andria is getting to know that I can.” She sat upright and began the queer croon he had heard once before, but this time he recognized it. It was a snake-charmer’s song, wordless; a thing to make the flesh crawl on the bones. “Where did you learn it?” he asked, cutting her short. He was not blood-brother to jaguars, and had no wish to have them called in the open windows. “I’ve always known it: I never learned it. I can do anything with animals. Andria says mother must have been a dompteuse--a lion-tamer, you know.” “It does go from mother to daughter, they say,” he returned rather faintly. He wondered if this Egerton were, perhaps, her father, and then--but no man could be so cold-bloodedly cruel as that! “There ought not to be wild animals here,” he said out of his thoughts. “Are these jaguars wild?” Every vestige of animation left the girl’s face. “No!” she breathed more than spoke. “And that’s the only thing that frightens me. They’re trained; they have a master, and they obey him. Do you remember I saw a face that morning? Well,” as he nodded, “I think they are his. I think he tries to set them on to kill us, and I’ve managed them so far. If I could only get them to like me best; they would obey me like dogs; but sometimes I can’t get them to come to me at all. Andria is afraid to let me play with them. One night I went out, but she came after me and dragged me in. There was nearly dreadful work that time; I could hardly keep them off her--the cubs, I mean. If the old ones had been there she would have been killed.” “Then she does try to take care of you!” the words escaped him, to his instant shame. “Andria? She loves me! She came out to me when they might have torn her up. But she isn’t afraid of that thing that hunts with them. It climbs up the jalousies, and hurries round the house all night, like a dried-up monkey--only I know it’s a man!” “Has she seen it?” “I don’t know. But I have, and I’m afraid of it. And Andria gets wild if I talk of it. She says it’s all a dream.” “It’s a damned unpleasant one, then!” thought Heriot, utterly at sea. If Egerton meant to do away with both women, the lovely Andria was a fool to be here. If only Beryl was to be got rid of, how was Mrs. Erle to save herself? As he thought of her she came into the room. She looked paler and more girlish than he had ever dreamed she could look; her red-brown hair was coiled simply round her head, and her plain, white gown was as strange on her as the absence of her rings from her rose-white hands. “Oh!”--she stopped at the sight of him--“Mr. Heriot, how did you--that is,” lamely, “I’m glad you are better!”