er quick heart.

"So long, little sister!" he said. "Yes, it will be quite all right. I'll
continue to cumber the ground a little longer, if you call that being
sensible. And if you think my chances of heaven are likely to be improved
by your kind intervention, p'r'aps you'll put up a prayer now and then on
my behalf to the Power that casts out devils--for we are many."

"I will, Nap, I will!" she said very earnestly.

When he was gone she mounted the stile and paused with her face to the
sky. "Take care of him, please, God!" she said.

CHAPTER XVI

DELIVERANCE

Notwithstanding her largeness of heart, Mrs. Errol was something of a
despot, and when once she had assumed command she was slow to
relinquish it.

"I guess you must let me have my own way, dear Anne," she said, "for I've
never had a daughter."

And Anne, to whom the burden of life just then was more than ordinarily
heavy, was fain to submit to the kindly tyranny. Mrs. Errol had found her
alone at the inn at Bramhurst on the night of the storm, and in response
to her earnest request had taken her without delay straight back to her
home. Very little had passed between them on the circumstances that had
resulted in this development. Scarcely had Nap's name been mentioned by
either. Mrs. Errol seemed to know him too well to need an explanation.
And Anne had noted this fact with a sick heart.

It meant to her the confirmation of what had already become a practical
conviction, that the man she had once dreamed that she loved was no
more than a myth of her own imagination. Again and yet again she had
been deceived, but her eyes were open at last finally and for all time.
No devil's craft, however wily, however convincing, could ever close
them again.

Lying in her darkened room, with her stretched nerves yet quivering at
every sound, she told herself over and over that she knew Nap Errol now
as others knew him, as he knew himself, a man cruel, merciless,
unscrupulous, in whose dark soul no germ of love had ever stirred.

Why he had ever desired her she could not determine. Possibly her very
faith in him--that faith that he had so rudely shattered--had been the
attraction; possibly only her aloofness, her pride, had kindled in him
the determination to conquer. But that he had ever loved her, as she
interpreted love, she now told herself was an utter impossibility. She
even questioned in the bitterness of her disillusionment if Love, that
True Roma