A week had gone by. Each day of the seven the thoroughbred with the slender legs and the tiny sensitive ears had stood in the barren dooryard before Elizabeth Landor's home. Moreover, with each repetition the arrival had been earlier, the halt longer. Though the weather was perfect, nevertheless the beast had grown impatient under the long waits, and telltale, a glaring black mound had come into being where he had pawed his displeasure. At first Craig on departing had carefully concealed the testimony of his presence beneath a sprinkling of dooryard litter; but at last he had ceased to do so, and bit by bit the mound had grown. Day had succeeded day, and no one had appeared to question the visitor's right of coming or of going. Even the wolf was no longer present to stare his disapproval. Verily, unchallenged, the king had come into his own in this realm of one; and as a monarch absolute ever rules, Clayton Craig had reigned, was reigning now. For he no longer halted perforce at the doorstep. He had never been invited to enter, yet he had entered--and the girl had spoken no word to prevent. Not by request were his cap and riding stick hanging from a peg beside the few belongings of How Landor; yet, likewise unchallenged, they were there. Not by the girl's solicitation was he lounging intimately in the single rocker the room boasted; yet once again the bald fact remained that though it was not yet nine by the clock, he was present, his legs comfortably crossed, his eyes, beneath drooping lids, whimsically observing the girl as she went about the perfunctory labour of putting the place to rights. "I say, Bess," he remarked casually at length, "you've dusted that unoffending table three times by actual count since I've been watching. Wouldn't it be proper to rest a bit now and entertain your company?" The girl did not smile. "Perhaps." She put away the cloth judicially. "I fancied you were tolerably amused as it was. However, if you prefer--" She drew another chair opposite, and, sitting down, folded her hands in her lap. A moment longer the man sat smiling at her; then shade by shade the whimsical expression vanished, and the normal proprietary look he had grown to assume in her presence took its place. "By the way, Bess," he commented, "isn't it about time to drop sarcasm when you and I are together? I know I've been a most reprehensible offender, but haven't I been punished enough?" "Punished?" There was just the ghost of a smile. "Is this your idea of punishment?" The man flushed involuntarily. His face had cleared remarkably in the past week of abstinence, and through the fair skin the colour showed plain. "Well, perhaps punishment is a little too severe. Leastways you've held me at arm's length until I'm beginning to despair." "Despair?" Again the ghost smiled forth. "Do you fancy I'm so dull that I don't realise what I'm doing, what you've done?"