"Oh, it's you, Lanny--Colonel Lanstron!" he exclaimed thickly. "I saw that some one had come in here and naturally I was alarmed, as nobody but myself ever enters. And Miss Galland!" He removed his hat deferentially and bowed; his stoop returned and the lines of his face drooped. "I was so stupid; it did not occur to me that you might be showing the tower to Colonel Lanstron." "We are sorry to have given you a fright!" said Marta very gently. "Eh? eh?" queried Feller, again deaf. "Fright? Oh, no, no fright. It might have been some boys from the town marauding." He was about to withdraw, in keeping with his circumspect adherence to his part, which he played with a sincerity that half-convinced even himself at times that he was really deaf, when the fire flickered back suddenly to his eyes and he glanced from Lanstron to the stairway in desperate inquiry. "Wait, Feller! Three of us share the secret now. These are Miss Galland's premises. I thought best that she should know everything," said Lanstron. "Everything!" exclaimed Feller. "Everything--" the word caught in his throat. "You mean my story, too?" He was neither young nor old now. He seemed nondescript and miserable. "She knows who I am?" he asked. "Yes!" Lanstron answered. "Lanny!" This almost reproachfully, as if the ethics of friendship had been abused. "Yes. I'm sorry, Gustave. I--" Lanstron began miserably. "But why not?" said Feller, with a wan attempt at a smile. "You see--I mean--it does not matter!" he concluded in a hopeless effort at philosophy. "My thoughtlessness, my callousness, my obsession with my work! I should not have told your story," said Lanstron. "His story!" exclaimed Marta, with a puzzled look to Lanstron before she turned to Feller with a look of warm sympathy. "Why, there is no story! You came with excellent recommendations. You are our very efficient gardener. That is all we need to know. Isn't that the way you wish it, Mr. Feller?" "Yes, just that!" he said softly, raising his eyes to her in gratitude. "Thank you, Miss Galland!" He was going after another "Thank you!" and a bow; going with the slow step and stoop of his part, when Lanstron, with a masculine roughness of impulse which may be a sublime gentleness, swung him around and seized his hands in a firm caress. "Forgive me, Gustave!" he begged. "Forgive the most brutal of all injuries--that which wounds a friend's sensibilities." "Why, there is nothing I could ever have to forgive you, Lanny," he said, returning Lanstron's pressure while for an instant his quickening muscles gave him a soldierly erectness. Then his attitude changed to one of doubt and inquiry. "And you found out that I was not deaf when you had that fall on the terrace?" he asked, turning to Marta. "That is how you happened to get the whole story? Tell me, honestly!" "Yes" "Had you suspected me before that?"