r tongues were loosened. Dare, turning to
Havill, said, 'Thank you; you have done me a timely turn to-day.'

'What! had you hopes that way?' asked Havill satirically.

'I! The woman that interests my heart has yet to be born,' said Dare,
with a steely coldness strange in such a juvenile, and yet almost
convincing. 'But though I have not personal hopes, I have an objection
to this courtship. Now I think we may as well fraternize, the situation
being what it is?'

'What is the situation?'

'He is in your way as her architect; he is in my way as her lover: we
don't want to hurt him, but we wish him clean out of the neighbourhood.'

'I'll go as far as that,' said Havill.

'I have come here at some trouble to myself, merely to observe: I find I
ought to stay to act.'

'If you were myself, a married man with people dependent on him, who has
had a professional certainty turned to a miserably remote contingency
by these events, you might say you ought to act; but what conceivable
difference it can make to you who it is the young lady takes to her
heart and home, I fail to understand.'

'Well, I'll tell you--this much at least. I want to keep the place
vacant for another man.'

'The place?'

'The place of husband to Miss Power, and proprietor of that castle and
domain.'

'That's a scheme with a vengeance. Who is the man?'

'It is my secret at present.'

'Certainly.' Havill drew a deep breath, and dropped into a tone of
depression. 'Well, scheme as you will, there will be small advantage to
me,' he murmured. 'The castle commission is as good as gone, and a bill
for two hundred pounds falls due next week.'

'Cheer up, heart! My position, if you only knew it, has ten times
the difficulties of yours, since this disagreeable discovery. Let us
consider if we can assist each other. The competition drawings are to be
sent in--when?'

'In something over six weeks--a fortnight before she returns from the
Scilly Isles, for which place she leaves here in a few days.'

'O, she goes away--that's better. Our lover will be working here at his
drawings, and she not present.'

'Exactly. Perhaps she is a little ashamed of the intimacy.'

'And if your design is considered best by the committee, he will have
no further reason for staying, assuming that they are not definitely
engaged to marry by that time?'

'I suppose so,' murmured Havill discontentedly. 'The conditions, as sent
to me, state that the designs are to be adjud