If Nancy were not quite distraught and bereft of her quick intelligence, she would have detected a note of breathless questioning and doubt in that confident assertion. Willard could not be certain that neither she nor Power had written to Marten; he had staked all, or nearly all, on ascertaining the fact during the first outburst of talk, while the girl was still quaking with fright at his unexpected appearance. He was well aware of her courage and adroitness. When she regained self-control--a matter of a minute or less--she might be clear-sighted enough to grasp the paramount importance of the admission that she had not as yet placed an insuperable barrier between herself and the man she had cast off. Once alive to its vital significance, he thought, she would either deceive him deliberately, and take the earliest opportunity of rectifying an error in strategy, or, at any rate, keep him in ignorance of the exact position of affairs. Unhappily, he counted well. Nancy was far too dismayed by his presence to pay heed to tricks and turns of speech. "Father," she said brokenly, "I have so much to endure that you, for one, should spare me your taunts." "I'm not taunting you," he urged. "I want to save you from yourself. By a stroke of good luck I was able to make it appear that you and I missed each other in Newport, owing to a railroad accident. Your friends on the island believe you are with me in New York. If we were to arrive at Newport tomorrow, not a living soul, except me, would know what has happened. I shall be dumb, you may well believe, and I suppose your--this fellow Power--will hold his tongue? Surely he is man enough for that!" Beneath the brown of sun and air, Nancy's forehead and cheeks had assumed the pallor of _camaïeu gris_, that wan tint with which the monkish illuminators of missals were wont to depict the sufferings of martyrs; but they now flushed with the red stain of unflinching resolve, for her father's loathsome suggestions aroused all that was high-minded and virile in her character. She withdrew a pace, and threw the gun across her body as though to protect herself from an assassin's knife. "How can you so demean yourself?" she cried hysterically. "Go away, and never let us meet again until you have taught yourself to think decently! Return to Hugh Marten now? Leave the man I love, and act the part of a faithful wife to one whom I hate? Even Marten, bad as he is, would shudder at the thought if he could hear you utter it!" Willard smiled again in ghastly humor. At least, there was one obstacle the less. She had not written! But his ill-timed mirth changed quickly to a snarl; for Guess had interpreted this angry scene in his own way, and was ready to begin a fray already postponed unduly. "Can't you beat off this damned dog?" came the cry. "Let us go into the house, and tell the cur to stop outside."