That she went in deadly
fear of her husband was fairly evident, though he seemed to treat
her always with great consideration and kindness and even with a
show of affection, to which at times she responded and from which
at other times she appeared to shrink with inexplicable terror.
"She doesn't know," Dunn said to himself. "But she suspects
--something."
Ella, he still watched with the same care and secrecy, and sometimes
he seemed to see her walking amidst the flowers as an angel of
sweetness and laughing innocence; and sometimes he saw her, as it
were, with the shadow of death around her beauty, and behind her
gentle eyes and winning ways a great and horrible abyss.
Of one thing he was certain--her mind was troubled and she was not
at ease; and it was plain, also, that she feared her smiling
soft-spoken stepfather.
As the days passed, too, Dunn grew convinced that she was watching
him all the time, even when she seemed most indifferent, as closely
and as intently as he watched her.
"All watching together," Dunn thought grimly. "It would be simple
enough, I suppose, if one could hit on the key move, but that I
suppose no one knows but Deede Dawson himself. One thing, he can't
very well be up to any fresh mischief while he's lounging about here
like this. I suppose he is simply waiting his time."
As for the chess problem, that baffled him entirely.
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