“Those Hammersmiths,” went on Octavia, in her sweetest society prattle, after subduing an intense desire to yank a handful of sunburnt, sandy hair from the head lying back contentedly against the canvas of the steamer chair, “had too much money.  Mines, wasn’t it?  It was something that paid something to the ton.  You couldn’t get a glass of plain water in their house.  Everything at that ball was dreadfully overdone.”

“It was,” said Teddy.

“Such a crowd there was!” Octavia continued, conscious that she was talking the rapid drivel of a school-girl describing her first dance.  “The balconies were as warm as the rooms.  I—­lost—­something at that ball.”  The last sentence was uttered in a tone calculated to remove the barbs from miles of wire.

“So did I,” confessed Teddy, in a lower voice.

“A glove,” said Octavia, falling back as the enemy approached her ditches.

“Caste,” said Teddy, halting his firing line without loss.  “I hobnobbed, half the evening with one of Hammersmith’s miners, a fellow who kept his hands in his pockets, and talked like an archangel about reduction plants and drifts and levels and sluice-boxes.”

“A pearl-gray glove, nearly new,” sighed Octavia, mournfully.

“A bang-up chap, that McArdle,” maintained Teddy approvingly.  “A man who hated olives and elevators; a man who handled mountains as croquettes, and built tunnels in the air; a man who never uttered a word of silly nonsense in his life.  Did you sign those lease-renewal applications yet, madama?  They’ve got to be on file in the land office by the thirty-first.”

Teddy turned his head lazily.  Octavia’s chair was vacant.

A certain centipede, crawling along the lines marked out by fate, expounded the situation.  It was early one morning while Octavia and Mrs. Maclntyre were trimming the honeysuckle on the west gallery.  Teddy had risen and departed hastily before daylight in response to word that a flock of ewes had been scattered from their bedding ground during the night by a thunder-storm.

The centipede, driven by destiny, showed himself on the floor of the gallery, and then, the screeches of the two women giving him his cue, he scuttled with all his yellow legs through the open door into the furthermost west room, which was Teddy’s.  Arming themselves with domestic utensils selected with regard to their length, Octavia and Mrs. Maclntyre, with much clutching of skirts and skirmishing for the position of rear guard in the attacking force, followed.

Once outside, the centipede seemed to have disappeared, and his prospective murderers began a thorough but cautious search for their victim.

Even in the midst of such a dangerous and absorbing adventure Octavia was conscious of an awed curiosity on finding herself in Teddy’s sanctum.  In that room he sat alone, silently communing with those secret thoughts that he now shared with no one, dreamed there whatever dreams he now called on no one to interpret.