“Do you think he can hear?” she whispered, gesturing over her shoulder.

“Who?”

“Who but Lord Nick!” she exclaimed softly.

The bewilderment of Joe clouded his face a second and then he was able to smooth it away.  What on earth was the reason of her concern about Lord Nick he was obviously wondering.

“I’ll tell you why,” she said, answering the unspoken question at once.  “He’s as jealous as the devil, Joe!”

The fat little man sighed as he looked at her.

“He can’t hear.  Not through that log wall.  But we’ll talk soft, if you want.”

“Yes, yes.  Keep your voice down.  He’s already jealous of you, Joe.”

“Of me?”

“He knows I like you, that I trust you; and just now he’s on edge about everyone I look at.”

The surprising news which the first part of this sentence contained caused Joe to gape, and the girl looked away in concern, enabling him to control his expression.  For she knew well enough that men hate to appear foolishly surprised.  And particularly a fox like Joe Rix.

“But what’s the trouble, Nelly?” He added with a touch of venom:  “I thought everything was going smoothly with you.  And I thought you weren’t worrying much about what Lord Nick had in his mind.”

She stared at him as though astonished.

“Do you think just the same as the rest of them?” she asked sadly.  “Do you mean to say that you’re fooled just the same as Harry Masters and the Pedlar and the rest of those fools—­including Nick himself?”

Joe Rix was by no means willing to declare himself a fool beforehand.  He now mustered a look of much reserved wisdom.

“I have my own doubts, Nell, but I’m not talking about them.”

He was so utterly at sea that she had to bite her lip hard to keep from breaking into ringing laughter.

“Oh, I knew that you’d seen through it, Joe,” she cried softly.  “You see what an awful mess I’ve gotten into?”

He passed a hurried hand across his forehead and then looked at her searchingly.  But he could not penetrate her pretense of concern.

“No matter what I think,” said Joe Rix, “you come out with it frankly.  I’ll listen.”

“As a friend, Joe?”

She managed to throw a plea into her voice that made Joe sigh.

“Sure.  You’ve already said that I’m your friend, and you’re right.”

“I’m in terrible, terrible trouble!  You know how it happened.  I was a fool.  I tried to play with Lord Nick.  And now he thinks I was in earnest.”

As though the strength of his legs had given way, Joe Rix slipped down into a chair.

“Go on,” he said huskily.  “You were playing with Lord Nick?”

“Can’t you put yourself in my place, Joe?  It’s always been taken for granted that I’m to marry Nick.  And the moment he comes around everybody else avoids me as if I were poison.  I was sick of it.  And when he showed up this time it was the same old story.  A man would as soon sign his own death warrant as ask me for a dance.  You know how it is?”