“Well,” he resumed complacently, “I met her on the following Thursday and we became very good friends, you understand, except that she always seemed particularly anxious to return home before dusk.  All this time I never knew who she was, or even where she lived, but of course I could see how the land lay.  She was some lady from London staying at one of the big houses about here and had to show up for dinner.  That night when we parted she gave me this little gold thing and arranged to see me again.”

He paused, knocking ash from his cigar and seemingly reflecting as to how he should word his next communication; but finally: 

“The third time I saw her,” he said, “I managed to arrange that she could not get in quite so early, you understand; and then—­I don’t know exactly how to tell you.  I am not a chap that gets in a panic very easily; but (I may mention that the scene took place in a wood) she gave me the biggest scare I have ever had in my life.”

He bent forward and again tapped me on the knee.

“My dear—­Mr. Addison, I think you said your name was?—­her eyes lighted up in the dark like a cat’s!”

He stared at me with some return of his old truculence as if anticipating ridicule and prepared to resent it, but I nodded sternly, watching him as if enthralled by his narrative, whereupon: 

“Yes—­like a cat’s!” he repeated; “and I’ll admit I got in a panic.  I don’t know if she thought from the way I yelled that I was going to attack her or what, but the next thing I knew she was at my throat.”

He uttered a sort of choking sound, tenderly touched the bandages about his neck and fingered the plaster which ornamented his face.

“At your throat?” said I.  “You mean she tried to throttle you?”

“Throttle me!” he exclaimed scornfully.  “She seized me with her teeth!”

“But,” I said, and hesitated, for I feared I might wound his curious susceptibility—­“the damage to your face?”

“Damn her!” he cried.  “Damn her!  I had never seen her without her gloves, you understand, but she must have taken them off that night; for this”—­he indicated his plastered countenance—­“is what she did with her nails!”

He paused, staring at me dully, and then with a hint of the old ridiculous vanity entering his voice: 

“But I scored after all,” he said, tossing the little amulet into the drawer from which he had taken it.  “If that’s worth L50 it will more than pay the doctor’s bill, I think!”

Following a brief interval: 

“Of course,” I said, “you would recognize the woman again?”

“I am not so certain,” declared the scarred man.  “She always wore some sort of veil; but you may be sure,” he added in a tone of supreme condescension, “that she was a very pretty woman, or I shouldn’t have been bothering with her.”

“You are quite sure of that?” I ventured to remark.