The next moment the
miserable insufficiency of her own excuse for deceiving him showed its
hollowness, self-exposed. She covered her face with her hands, and
found refuge--where she had often found refuge before--in the helpless
resignation of despair. "Oh, that I had died before I entered this
house! Oh, that I could die and have done with it at this moment!" So
the struggle had ended with her hundreds of times already. So it ended
now.

The door leading into the billiard-room opened softly. Horace Holmcroft
had waited to hear the result of Lady Janet's interference in his favor
until he could wait no longer.

He looked in cautiously, ready to withdraw again unnoticed if the two
were still talking together. The absence of Lady Janet suggested that
the interview had come to an end. Was his betrothed wife waiting alone
to speak to him on his return to the room? He advanced a few steps.
She never moved; she sat heedless, absorbed in her thoughts. Were they
thoughts of _him?_ He advanced a little nearer, and called to her.

"Grace!"

She sprang to her feet, with a faint cry. "I wish you wouldn't startle
me," she said, irritably, sinking back on the sofa. "Any sudden alarm
sets my heart beating as if it would choke me."

Horace pleaded for pardon with a lover's humility. In her present state
of nervous irritation she was not to be appeased. She looked away from
him in silence. Entirely ignorant of the paroxysm of mental suffering
through which she had just passed, he seated himself by her side, and
asked her gently if she had seen Lady Janet. She made an affirmative
answer with an unreasonable impatience of tone and manner which would
have warned an older and more experienced man to give her time before
he spoke again. Horace was young, and weary of the suspense that he
had endured in the other room. He unwisely pressed her with another
question.

"Has Lady Janet said anything to you--"

She turned on him angrily before he could finish the sentence. "You have
tried to make her hurry me into marrying you," she burst out. "I see it
in your face!"

Plain as the warning was this time, Horace still failed to interpret it
in the right way. "Don't be angry!" he said, good-humoredly. "Is it so
very inexcusable to ask Lady Janet to intercede for me? I have tried to
persuade you in vain. My mother and my sisters have pleaded for me, and
you turn a deaf ear--"

She could endure it no longer. She stamped her foot on the