“Are you _sure_ you do?” she said in a hurried whisper, so low that he could just hear it. Then she turned briskly toward his brother-in-law, who stood at a little distance, waiting their pleasure. “Run along, Hobart, and please tell Mrs. Tower I haven’t kidnapped him;—he’s staying to play it out with me of his own free will. And please pay all the caddies off and let them go. We don’t need them, and they’re dying to get home.” He was obedient, and from the clubhouse veranda, where lights now shone, it could be discerned that the party on the links had broken up. The caddies ran scurrying by, their shrill outcries disturbing the air about them, and, in their wake, the slight figure of Mr. Hobart Simms appeared within the radius of illumination from the building. “They’re coming,” Anne Simms said to her sister. “Don’t let them see anything.” Mr. Simms mounted the dozen steps that led up to the veranda. “Dear me, Anne!” he said. “I’m afraid you’ve been waiting quite a time. I can’t tell you how sorry——” But she cut his apology short. “Where’s John?” “Old John? Why, I gave up; but he’s decided to play it out. Old John and I started pretty late anyhow, and we were playing around with Julietta Voss, as it happened——” “Yes,” his wife said, dryly, “‘as it happens’ rather often! Where are they?” “Just out yonder.” “Where? _We_ can’t see anybody.” “Well, they’re there anyhow,” he returned. “They’ll be along in a minute or two.” Mrs. Simms rose from her chair. “Suppose you go and bring them,” she said. But before he could make any response, her sister intervened. “No! Oh, _no_!” Mildred cried in a voice of distress, and, rising, too, she caught Anne’s hand in hers. “Don’t send him! It would look as if——” She stopped, perceptibly agitated. The surprise of the gentleman present was genuine, though not so acute as that of an inexperienced man who expects ladies never to show unreasonable and apparently causeless emotion. “Why, what’s the matter?” he said. “It doesn’t seem to me that just because two people happen to get interested in the game——” “Never mind!” his wife said, sharply. “If you intend to take your clubs down to the locker room you’d better be doing it.” “Very well.” He entered the clubhouse through a French window that opened upon the veranda, and his surprise was somewhat increased when his wife followed him. “Wait,” she said, as she closed the window behind her. “Hobart Simms, I never dreamed you’d allow yourself to be put in such a position.” “What?” he said. “What position am I in?” “I didn’t think you were this kind of man at all,” his wife informed him with continued severity. “I always believed you were intelligent—even about women!”