eyes.

It was an ordeal on which Captain Edward Oliphant had not calculated.
The sight of her there, the touch of her hands, the clear flash of her
eyes, recalled to him all sorts of unpleasant memories. They reminded
him of a day long ago, when the girl's mother had stood thus and pleaded
with him for the sake of their children to be pure and honest and self-
respecting. It reminded him of his own miserable schemings and follies,
and how he had rejected that dear appeal, and ever since slipped and
slipped out of reach of any love but the love of himself. It reminded
him of the day when he heard that the one prop of his manhood had gone
from him; and of how, even then, his sorrow was tempered by the thought
that he was a free man to follow his own paths without question or
reproof. Now, suddenly, the same hands seemed for a moment to lie on
his shoulders, the same eyes to look into his, the same voice to fall on
his ear, and he staggered under the illusion.

For a moment at least hope was within his reach. But the sound of a
man's voice in the passage without recalled him, with a shiver, to
himself.

It was Ratman's voice--the voice of the man to whom he owed money, who
held the secret of his crime, who claimed his villainy and--who could
say?--might even have to be pacified with a human sacrifice.

He shook her off rudely and said in dry, hard tones--

"Rosalind, I am disappointed in you. I will not discuss the matter with
you. You know my wish; I expect you to obey me."

And he left the room.

She remained standing where she was till the bell rang for dinner. Then
with a shiver she went down-stairs.

On the stairs she met Mr Armstrong.

"Your father has returned," said he.

"Yes, with a friend. Are you going down, or shall you stay with Roger?"

"May I?" he asked.

"You know how glad he will be."

So the tutor turned back, and thought to himself that Miss Rosalind was
evidently anxious that he should not be a witness to her introduction to
her father's friend.

Mr Ratman, brilliantly arranged in evening dress, and evidently already
very much at home, was comfortably leaning against the mantelpiece in
the hall as she descended. He did not wait for an introduction.

"I could tell Miss Oliphant anywhere," said he, advancing, "by her
likeness to her father. May I offer you my arm?"

"I am not at all like father," said she quietly, scanning him as she
spoke in a way which made even him uncomf