They were as usual in the garden, and it hadn't yet been so present to him that if he were only a happy cad there would be a good way to protect her.

As she wouldn't hear of his being yet beyond precautions she had gone into the house for a particular shawl that was just the thing for his knees, and, blinking in the watery sunshine, had come back with it across the fine little lawn.

He was neither fatuous nor asinine, but he had almost to put it to himself as a small task to resist the sense of his absurd advantage with her.

It filled him with horror and awkwardness, made him think of he didn't know what, recalled something of Maupassant's--the smitten "Miss Harriet" and her tragic fate.

There was a preposterous possibility--yes, he held the strings quite in his hands--of keeping the treasure for himself.