The note was written in a cramped, reversed hand, and, after a hasty perusal, Ray bent his head and scanned the pen strokes closely, then he looked up with all the color gone from his face, and a strange gleam in his eyes.
"How—how do you say this came, Heath?"
"I didn't say, for I don't know, my lad. It made its first appearance lying just there," and the doctor pointed with his wisp broom, which he had been vigorously applying to a brown overcoat, at the spot just inside the door where he had first perceived the letter, and then resumed his occupation without observing the trouble in Ray's face. "Sensational, isn't it? but I can't think of quitting W—— just as it begins to grow interesting."
"Then you take no stock in this warning?"
"Bah! why should I?"
"But if you should have secret foes?"
"Let them come on," quoted the doctor, theatrically; "bring along that precious document, Ray, and come along yourself."
Ray Vandyck, still looking troubled and anxious, arose, and, with lagging steps, followed his friend; as he noted with a new curiosity the tall, lithe, well knit figure striding on before him, the handsome, haughtily poised head, and the careless indifference of mien, he asked himself:
"What can it be, this mystery and danger that surrounds him, that has caused Constance Wardour to take such unprecedented measures to insure his safety, and has wrung from Sybil Lamotte this strangely worded, oddly and ineffectually disguised warning," for Ray, seeing not as the world sees, but with the eyes of love, had recognized in the strange scrawl the hand of the woman he had loved and lost.
"Heath is in some peril," thought he, and then, with a rueful sigh, "Oh! I would risk dangers too to be watched over by two such women."