THE RED LIGHT It was an evening without stars, but fair, sufficient wind to make her Ladyship cling haughtily to his arm as they turned corners.

Many of the visitors were in the garden, some grouped round a quartet of gaily attired minstrels, but more sitting in little arbours or prowling in search of an arbour to sit in; the night was so dark that when our two passed beyond the light of the hotel windows they could scarce see the shrubs they brushed against; cigars without faces behind them sauntered past; several times they thought they had found an unoccupied arbour at last, when they heard the clink of coffee-cups.
"I believe the castle dates from the fifteenth century," Tommy would then say suddenly, though it was not of castles he had been talking.
With a certain satisfaction he noticed that she permitted him, without comment, to bring in the castle thus and to drop it the moment the emergency had passed.

But he had little other encouragement.

Even when she pressed his arm it was only as an intimation that the castle was needed.
"I can't even make her angry," he said wrathfully to himself.
"You answer not a word," he said in great dejection to her.
"I am afraid to speak," she admitted.

"I don't know who may hear." "Alice," he said eagerly, "what would you say if you were not afraid to speak ?" They had stopped, and he thought she trembled a little on his arm, but he could not be sure.