He was not surprised when she swept by him, her head high, her cheeks white with anger, her stormy eyes denying him even so much as a look of scorn. He stood aside, allowing her to pass, and remained motionless, gazing after her until she turned in at her own gate and was lost to view. He shook his head dubiously and sighed. "Little Minda," he mused, under his breath. "You were my playmate once upon a time,--and now! Now what are you? A rascal's sweetheart, if all they say is true. Gad, how beautiful you are!" He was walking slowly through the path, his head bent, his eyes clouded with trouble. "And how you are hating me at this moment. What a devil's mess it all is!" His eye fell upon something white lying at the edge of the path a few feet ahead. It was a neatly folded sheet of note paper. He stood looking down at it for a moment. She must have dropped it as she came through. It was clean and unsoiled. A message, perhaps, from Barry Lapelle, smuggled to her through the connivance of a friendly go-between,--the girl she had gone to visit, what was her name? He stooped to pick it up, but before his fingers touched it he straightened up and deliberately moved it with the toe of his boot to a less exposed place among the bushes, where he would have failed to see it in passing. Then he strode resolutely away without so much as a glance over his shoulder, and, coming to the open road, stepped briskly off in the direction of the public Square. His conscience would have rejoiced had he betrayed it by secreting himself among the bushes for a matter of five minutes,--quaint paradox, indeed!--for he would have seen her steal warily, anxiously into the thicket in search of the lost missive,--and he would have been further exalted by the little cry of relief that fell from her lips as she snatched it up and sped incontinently homeward, as if pursued by all the eyes in Christendom. As a matter of fact, it was not a letter from Barry to Viola. It was the other way round. She had written him a long letter absolving herself from blame in the contretemps of the night before, at the same time confessing that she was absolutely in the dark as to how her mother had found out about their plans. Suffice to say, she HAD found out early in the evening and, to employ her own words, "You know the result." Then she went on to say that, all things considered, she was now quite sure she could never, never consent to make another attempt.