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"Thank you ever so much——" she began, and at that moment the lawn was made radiant with a sustained glare of lightning.
She was looking into a face that was covered from brow to chin with a black silk mask!
CHAPTER VIII
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The Robber
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"It is true—true!" she grasped, and he heard the pain in her voice and peered down.
"What is true?—please don't shout or they will hear you."
Trembling helplessly, she tried to regain control of her voice.
"You are a burglar!" she said, and heard his smothered exclamation.
"You mean ... the mask? I'm afraid you saw it. One mask doesn't make a burglar, you know, any more than one swallow makes a summer! On a wet night like this a man who wishes to keep that school-girl complexion would naturally protect——"
"Please don't be absurd!"
She realised, so keen was her sense of humour, that the dignity of her tone did not exactly accord with her own deplorable situation. She was lying uncomfortably on wet grass, her face.... She hoped he could not see her face, and furtively wiped some of the mud away with the slimy corner of her raincoat, which, for some extraordinary reason, she had carried over her arm through the storm.