“True, but I am located at a considerable distance from the plantations I lease, and going to and fro he is of special use to me. I can’t stand a slow way of getting through the world, and the roads won’t admit of an auto.” The two men were quite unconstrained for the moment in the natural interest of a subject foreign to their difficult mutual relations. Randal Ducie’s head was thrown up, his eyes glowed; he was looking at the horse with a sort of glad admiration--an expression which Paula well remembered. Floyd-Rosney’s eyes narrowed as they scanned successively the points of the fine animal, his own face calm, patronizing, approving. Neither of them, for the moment, was thinking of her. She had followed them out upon the wide stone portico and stood in the sun, her head tilted a trifle that her broad hat of taupe velvet might shade her eyes. She brought herself potently into the foreground, seizing the fact that Randal was unincumbered with baggage of any sort. “Where is the treasure trove?” she cried. “Surely you are not going to leave it in the ruins of this old mansion!” Her husband flashed at her a glance of reproof which would once have silenced her, abashed to the ground. Now she repeated her words, wondering to feel so composed, so possessed of all her faculties. Without a conscious effort of observation the details of the scene were registered in her mind unbefogged by her wonted bewilderment in her husband’s disapproval. She even noticed the groom who had driven the vehicle back from the livery stable--no colored servant, but a carrot-headed youth, with jockey boots, riding breeches, a long freckled face, and small red-lidded eyes, very close together, gazing at Ducie with a keen intentness as she asked the question. The fame of the discovery must have been bruited abroad already, and she vaguely wondered at this, for, as yet, no one on land knew the facts, except the alienist and his party, safely housed at the sanatorium. “The chest of valuables found here last night?” replied Ducie. “Why, I haven’t it. My brother took it on the boat in his suitcase, and, before nightfall, it will be in one of the banks in Vicksburg.” Floyd-Rosney, thrown out of all his reckonings by the unaccountable behavior of his wife, spoke at random, more to obviate its effects than with any valid intendment. “I saw the box opened,” he said; “only family jewels and a lot of gold coin and papers, but I should think, from the pretensions of this place, there must have been elaborate table services of silver, perhaps of gold plate. Were any such appurtenances hidden, do you know, and recovered?” Ducie shook his head. “I know nothing of such ware. It may be, or it may not be here. The absence of the papers brought out the story of the hiding of the family diamonds, else the box would have remained in the capital of the pilaster, where my uncle left it, till the crack of doom.”