he was.

"Then we were obliged to marry. You see now, child, what we women are;
we never learn."

"Oh, if only you and Father had not insisted on bringing this man into
my life!" moaned Mary. "My instinct warned me to keep him at a
distance, but you deadened it." She added at once: "No, don't take it
like that, Aunt Eva! I am not reproaching you and Father. Besides,
there's no use in complaining now. There is only one thing to be
done--to shut my eyes and take the plunge."

In this Mrs. Dawes entirely agreed with her. "Afterwards you will do as
I did; when your reputation is saved, you will separate from him."

"No, that I shall not do. There will be something then that will bind us
together. Good God! good God!" she moaned, clinging to her old friend
and smothering her cry in the bed-clothes.

Mrs. Dawes sat helpless, holding her. "I don't understand this," she
said.

Mary raised her head quickly: "Do you not understand? He did it on
purpose to bind me. He knew me."

Then she threw herself across the bed again, miserable, despairing.
Between her outbursts of weeping came the cry: "There is no way out of
it! no way out of it!"

Mrs. Dawes had neither the strength nor the courage to seek for words to
comfort such distress.

It took its free course, until the anger cooled. Mrs. Dawes could feel
that another emotion was gradually taking the upper hand. Mary raised
her head; in her eyes, red with weeping, was hatred.

"I thought that I was giving myself to a gentleman; I discovered that it
was to a speculator." She rose slowly.

"Will you say that to him, child?"

"Most certainly not! Nothing whatever to that effect. I shall merely say
that it is necessary we should marry."

* * * * *

Three days later a letter was brought in to Joergen Thiis at the Foreign
Office. It was from Mary. "I am at the Grand Hotel, and expect you to
meet me there, outside the entrance, at two o'clock punctually."

He understood at once what this implied, and hurried off, for it was now
a quarter to two. It did not strike him until he was on his way
downstairs that their meeting was to be "outside the entrance"!

She did not wish to be alone with him in her room.

This altered his intentions. He ran up to his rooms and released from
imprisonment a little black poodle puppy, a valuable animal, which he
was training.

The middle of the road was filthy with slush and mud, and the dog was at
once