she continued: "For some reason that I don't pretend to guess, Owen has
taken it into his head that you've influenced Miss Viner to break her
engagement."

She spoke slowly and deliberately, because she wished to give time and
to gain it; time for Darrow and Sophy to receive the full impact of what
she was saying, and time to observe its full effect on them. She had
said to herself: "If there's nothing between them, they'll look at each
other; if there IS something, they won't;" and as she ceased to speak
she felt as if all her life were in her eyes.

Sophy, after a start of protest, remained motionless, her gaze on the
ground. Darrow, his face grown grave, glanced slowly from Owen Leath to
Anna. With his eyes on the latter he asked: "Has Miss Viner broken her
engagement?"

A moment's silence followed his question; then the girl looked up and
said: "Yes!"

Owen, as she spoke, uttered a smothered exclamation and walked out of
the room. She continued to stand in the same place, without appearing
to notice his departure, and without vouchsafing an additional word of
explanation; then, before Anna could find a cry to detain her, she too
turned and went out.

"For God's sake, what's happened?" Darrow asked; but Anna, with a drop
of the heart, was saying to herself that he and Sophy Viner had not
looked at each other.

XXV

Anna stood in the middle of the room, her eyes on the door. Darrow's
questioning gaze was still on her, and she said to herself with a
quick-drawn breath: "If only he doesn't come near me!"

It seemed to her that she had been suddenly endowed with the fatal gift
of reading the secret sense of every seemingly spontaneous look and
movement, and that in his least gesture of affection she would detect a
cold design.

For a moment longer he continued to look at her enquiringly; then he
turned away and took up his habitual stand by the mantel-piece. She drew
a deep breath of relief.

"Won't you please explain?" he said.

"I can't explain: I don't know. I didn't even know--till she told
you--that she really meant to break her engagement. All I know is that
she came to me just now and said she wished to leave Givre today; and
that Owen, when he heard of it--for she hadn't told him--at once accused
her of going away with the secret intention of throwing him over."

"And you think it's a definite break?" She perceived, as she spoke, that
his brow had cleared.

"How should I know? Perhaps y