Willard weighed the point. In one respect, he was candid with himself. He had come to Newport to spy on Nancy, and, if necessary, to put a prompt and effectual end to any threatened renewal of her friendship with Power. The intuition of sheer hatred had half warned him that the man whom he regarded as his worst enemy might possibly visit Rhode Island; but some newspaper paragraph about the purchase of horses bred in the state of New York had lulled his suspicions until he chanced to meet Benson at lunch in the Brown Palace Hotel. Marten's secretary was worried. He had replied to Nancy's letter the previous day; but was not quite sure that he had taken the right line, and he seized the opportunity now to consult her father. Of course, he did not reveal his employer's business, and Willard was the last person with whom he could discuss the mortgage transaction fully; but he saw no harm in alluding casually to Mrs. Marten's curious inquiry, and was relieved to find that her father agreed with the answer he had given. The actual truth was that Willard felt too stunned by the disclosure to trust his own speech. He was well aware already that Marten had used him as a cat's-paw in bringing about the marriage; but that phase of the affair had long ceased to trouble him. The real shock of Benson's guarded statement lay in Nancy's pointblank question. Why had she put it? What influence was at work that such serious thought should be given to his financial straits of nearly four years ago? In the upshot, he left Denver by that night's mail; though the letter in which he spoke tentatively of a visit to Newport, and of which Nancy had availed herself in talk with her friends at the Casino, had been only a day in the post, and, in the ordinary course of events, demanded a reply before he undertook a journey of two thousand miles. And now he was vaguely uneasy. Though he hated the sight of Power, he wished heartily that the interloper who had snatched from him the bonanza of the Dolores Ranch had remained in Newport during this one day, at least. Yes, he would speak to Power's British acquaintance, and glean some news of the man to whom he had done a mortal wrong and therefore hated with an intensity bordering on mania. Dacre saw him coming; so it was with the correct air of polite indifference that he heard himself addressed by an elderly stranger. "I'm sorry to disturb you," said Willard, "but the head waiter tells me that your friend, Mr. Power, has left Newport. As I am anxious to have a word with him, I thought that, perhaps, you wouldn't mind telling me his whereabouts. My name is Willard, and I arrived here from Denver at a late hour yesterday; at midnight, in fact, my train having been delayed by an accident."