the two men toed the line for her mental inspection, and the result was a feminine outcry against Fate, the Powers above and below--what you will, in a word, except her concrete self.

"What brought you over here?" she cried. "You said you were going to Ravenglass. You told me so. What brought you over to Wastdale?"

She spoke fiercely, almost vindictively, and it seemed as if the pair had suddenly changed places, as if she were the accuser and he the culprit, standing meekly self-condemned. Indeed, to complete the illusion, there was even a tinge of remorse in his tone as he answered her.

"God, perhaps. Who knows?"

"Oh! yes, yes, yes!" she went on. "Preach to me! Preach to me! Go on! Only be quick about it and make the sermon short!"

"Don't, Kitty!" he said, and added, wistfully, "It can't be your true self that is speaking."

"Yea, it is," she replied, struggling with a sense of pity for him (evoked by the quiet sadness of his voice). "My very own self, my real true self, that you have never known--that you never would know. You always had wrong ideas about me. I tried to open your eyes at first, but it was no good, and I gave it up. You always dressed me up in virtues that didn't fit me. I used to feel as if I were wearing a strait-waistcoat."

Gordon drew up a chair and sat opposite to her on the other side of the fireplace.

"Then it was all my fault," he said.

Kate glanced at him quickly, but there was no trace of irony in his manner. He was speaking quite seriously. As a matter of fact, it had just begun to dawn on him that a frank expectation of ideal behaviour is the most exacting form of tyranny a man can exercise over a woman.

"No," she replied. "No! It was my fault. I ought never to have become engaged to you; for I never loved you, even at the beginning. Oh, it is no use shirking the truth now," she went on, as Gordon rose with a cry of pain. "I never loved you. I realised that very soon after we were engaged. I had always liked you. I liked you better than any man I had met, and so in time I thought I might come to love you as well. I don't know whether I ever should have reached that if I had been left alone. But you made it impossible. You would not see that I had faults and caprices. You would not see that those very faults pleased me, that I meant to keep them, that I did not want to change. No! Whenever you came to me, I always felt as if I was being lifted up reverently and set on a very high and a very small pedestal. And there I had to stand, with my heels together, and my toes turned out, in an attitude of decorum until you had gone. Well, you want people with flat heels to enjoy that. I always wore high ones, and the attitude tired me."

Instinctively she stretched one foot out as she spoke. The sparkle of the firelight on the buckle caught Gordon's eye, and he saw that she was wearing thin kid slippers with a strap across the instep.

"You must be wet through," he exclaimed.

"No," she answered. "I rode to the head of the Pass, and left the horse tied up to the footbridge over the stream. It was dry enough the rest of the way."

"You rode over here!" he exclaimed. "Then they must have known you were coming?"

"Who must have known?" she asked, in a sudden alarm.

"Your father and your aunt. She is staying with you still, I suppose."

"Yes. But they knew nothing, of course. My father had some people to dinner to-night. I left them early, saying that I was tired. I should have had no time to change if I had thought of it, as it was close on ten. I had told Martin, our groom, that I should want a horse--you know he would do anything for me--and he had it ready saddled. So I locked my room door, took the key with me, and came away just as I was."

She stopped abruptly. The mention of her home aroused her to the consequences of her detection. Up till now the fact that Gordon had found her out had alone possessed her mind. Now, however, she was compelled to look forward. What would he do? He was to have married her in a week, in just seven days. Would he disclose the truth? She scanned his face for an answer to her conjectures.

Gordon was leaning against the mantelshelf above her, and his eyes met her inquiring gaze.

"Well?" he asked.

"So you see," she faltered, "I am pretty safe for to-night; but to-morrow?"

"To-morrow?" He seemed not to have grasped her drift.

"Yes! To-morrow," she repeated. "What do you mean to do?"

The question startled Gordon. He had been thinking of her, not of himself. Yes, to-morrow he would have to act. But how?

"I don't know," he answered. "I must have time to think. I have not mastered today yet."

"You will spare me as much as you can?"

There was something very pitiful in the childlike entreaty; at least so it seemed to Gordon. She was so young for all this misery. Her very humility pained him, all the more because it was so strange to him.

"I will spare you altogether, child," he replied. "You need not be afraid of me. I have loved you too well to hurt you now."

For a moment or two he paced about the room restlessly, trying to discover some means by which he could break the marriage off and take the blame upon himself. But no likely plan occurred to him. His brain refused to act. Disconnected scraps of ideas and ludicrous reminiscences, all foreign to the matter, forced themselves upon his mind, the harder he strove to think. He gave the effort up. He would be able to concentrate his attention better when he was alone. Besides, he recollected he had not heard the whole story as yet. Some clue to an issue might perhaps be found in the untold remainder.

"Tell me the rest!" he said, returning to his chair.

"The rest?" she inquired. Gordon's generosity had pierced straight to her heart at last, and had sent the tears rolling down her cheeks.

"Yes! The rest of the story down to tonight."

"Oh! I can't," she cried. "Not now! I can't! If you had been rough and harsh, yes! But you have been so gentle with me.

"It will be the kindest way for me," Gordon replied. "I must know the truth some way or another, and I would rather have you tell it me than ferret it out for myself."

"Very well, then," she said, wearily; and for a space there was silence in the room.