"Thank you, and please consider yourself engaged, if the improbable happens!" laughed Liane, in girlish mockery, as she hurried out, meeting in the hall a dark-browed stranger, from whom she started back in dismay as he passed scowlingly to his room.
It was no wonder Liane recoiled in fear and dislike from Carlos Cisneros, the new boarder.
The sight of his somber, scowling face, with its dark beard, recalled to her that night upon the beach when Devereaux had saved her from a ruffian's insults.
For it was the selfsame face that had scowled upon her in the moonlight that night. It had terrified her too much ever to be forgotten.
He had evidently recognized her, too, from his start of surprise, and the angry bow with which he passed her by.
Trembling with the surprise of the unpleasant rencounter, Liane hastened to seclude herself within her own rooms.
Granny Jenks had just entered, and she was still in the vilest of humors, glaring murderously at Liane, without uttering a word, and giving vent to her temper by banging and slamming everything within her reach.
Liane, gentle, sorrowful, patient, her young heart full of the happenings of the day, and tremulous hopes for the morrow, moved softly about, laying the cloth for tea on the small table, and helping as much as the snapping, snarling old woman would permit.