SON OF THE WIND
He left the house, and plunged into fresh air as into a bath. The excursion he had had to make from his high resolves of silence was over. It had been more unpleasant than he had expected. And at the end, in spite of his care, he had not quite succeeded in keeping Ferrier under heel. The man had made conditions with him. But now at last the unfortunate incident was behind him. The lie straight out to the Raders would not be hard. It was a part of his robust scheme. It was in the cause of silence—that good and decent cause—that he intended to speak, giving the women sound invented reasons for not coming back to-night, or even the next night, as a man must sometimes give to his own people. Certainly that was what these people were to him; and with them also he wanted to square certain other matters, to have them out as clear as he kept the other dark, before he went.
Had Mrs. Rader wanted to abet his project she could not have done better for him than give him the room with the outside stair. On this occasion it enabled him to enter the Raders' unseen, bathe, change, and appear down-stairs looking as debonair as if he had passed the night in dreams. After a little searching he found Blanche with her father in the study. Rader, his long chin in his hand, scarcely looked at him. Carron thought that, since their talk
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