y, awe-stricken features of the general, brightened the boyish
ill-humour in Bernard's eyes, and played peaceably over Miss Chris's
tranquil countenance.

"Bernard, it is not true," she said again.

The poker fell with a clatter to the hearth; and the noise irritated
her. Bernard put out a sudden, soothing hand.

"It is what they say in Kingsborough," he answered.

She turned from him to the window, pushed the curtains aside, and went
out again into the sunset.

VI

She ran swiftly along the walk, into the gloom of the avenue, and out
again to the open road. The sunset colours were flaming in the west, and
above them a solitary star was shining. The fields lay sombre and
deserted on either side, but straight ahead, in the lighter streak of
the road, she saw Nicholas's figure swinging onward. She might have
called to him, but she did not; she sped like a shadow in his path
until, hearing her footfalls in the dust, he looked back and halted.

"You!" he exclaimed.

She came up to him, her hand at her throat, her face turned towards the
sunset. For a moment her breath failed and she could not speak; then all
the words that she had meant to say--the appeal to him for truth, the
cry of her own belief in him--rang theatrical and ineffectual in her
brain.

When at last she spoke, it was to voice the mere tripping of her
tongue--to utter words which belied the beating of her thoughts.

"You must marry her," she said, and it seemed to her that it was a
stranger who spoke. She did not mean that--she had never meant it.

He looked at her blankly, and made a sudden movement forward, but she
waved him off.

"For God's sake, whom?" he demanded.

She wished that he had laughed at her--that he had laid bare the whole
hideous farce, but he did not; he regarded her gravely, with a grim
inquiry.

"Whom do you mean?" he repeated.

A light wind sprang up, blowing across the pasture and whirling the dead
leaves of distant trees into their faces. Overhead other stars came out,
and far away an owl hooted.

"Oh! you know, you know," she said, with a desperate anger at his
immobility. "When I saw you with her to-day, I did not--I did not--"

"Do you mean Bessie Pollard?" he asked. His voice was hard; it was
characteristic of him that, in the supreme test, his sense of humour
failed him. He met grave issues with a gravity that upheld them.

She bowed her head. At the same time she flung out a despairing hand for
hop