But at once she realised that other safeguards were needful. She hesitated, looked about her, looked at Verplank, gave him his hat, motioned to him. Then, preceding him, she passed into an adjoining salon, entered the dining room and moved from it to the garden below.
Passably mystified, he followed.
The air, freighted with fragrance, stirred by music from the church, the dogs, at sight of him, charged suddenly with menaces. Straining at their chains, viciously they clamoured.
Indifferently Verplank glanced from them to the gate beyond, to which Leilah was leading him.
When both reached it, she opened it and said: “Come this way to-morrow, will you?”
For a second he considered her. Her face was as a book in which he could read the reason. In view of many things, particularly of the duel, it seemed to him all very puerile.
But, replacing his hat, grimly he nodded. “Before then I have rather an idea that there may be a deficit among us.”
This expression, in itself perhaps over precise, was too much for her and the fact that it was showed itself in her eyes.
Without heeding their inquiry he nodded again. “I will come this way but only that together we may leave by the other.”