Then, while the gayety goes on, I think of Groveland and its mystery; of the anonymous warning, the album verse, the initials A. B. Again I take my wild John Gilpin ride, with one arm limp and bleeding.
"Ah," I say to myself, thinking wrathfully of his taunting words and insolent bearing, which my hostess had seemed powerless to resent, "Ah, my gentleman, if I should trace that unlucky bullet to you, then shall Miss Manvers rejoice at your downfall!"
What was the occasion of their quarrel? What was the meaning of their strange words?
Again and again I ask myself the question as I go home through the August darkness, having first seen pretty Nettie Harris safely inside her father's cottage gate.
But I find no satisfactory answer to my questions. I might have dismissed the matter from my thoughts as only a lover's quarrel, save for the last words uttered by Brookhouse. But lovers are not apt to advise their sweethearts to "make an inning" with another fellow. If jealousy existed, it was assuredly all on the side of the lady.
Having watched them narrowly after their interview behind the rose trellis, I am inclined to think it was not a lover's quarrel; and if not that, what was it?
I give up the riddle at last, but I can not dismiss the scene from my mental vision, still less can I banish the remembrance of the white, angry face, and the tormenting fancy that I have not seen it to-day for the first time.
I am perplexed and annoyed.
I stop at the office desk to light a cigar and exchange a word with "mine host." Dimber Joe is writing ostentatiously at a small table, and Blake Simpson is smoking on the piazza.