as if in painful thought. "My poor little sister!" he said. "Poor
Dapple!"

I sat down and stared stupidly before me, too overcome by the situation
to be able even to think.

"Your mother says the wedding is to go on; you say it is to be
stopped----"

He pounced upon me. "I am master here," he said.

He had always seemed a boy to me, and I had never known him to exert
his authority before. His mother and young sister had taken their own
way in affairs, and had never been hampered by the consideration that
"Hughie" was a person of importance. Yet, there was no doubt about his
position. Looking at, and listening to him now, I saw that he meant to
have his way; and my conscience told me that his way was the right one.

A word or two more he said to me of incidents in Jack Marston's
history; showed me how it had happened that these were only recently
revealed to him; how, to the Mavors' circle he had been entirely a
stranger; how the few friends of Hugh's who had had any acquaintance
with the man had wondered at the sister's engagement, but thought it no
business of their own.

"Have you made your mother understand you are determined in the
matter?"

"I have told her I will shoot the man before he shall marry my sister."

"And what is she doing? Your mother?"

"She is raving like a madwoman in her bedroom."

The stupendousness of the situation, to which at moments I felt
insensible, kept coming over me in waves of comprehension.

"Well, I don't wonder!" I said.

Long pauses fell between our fragments of speech. He stood before the
square centre table, black-browed, staring at its glittering burden.

The footman appeared at the door. "If you please, sir, Hamley wishes to
know if the dog-cart as well as the brougham and omnibus is to meet the
5.15 this evening?"

His master looked at the man with knit brows, as if making a painful
effort to understand what was said. He pulled out his watch, and for a
minute studied it.

"Tell Hamley," then he said, "not to meet the 5.15 at all. No one will
come by that train. In ten minutes I shall want to send some
telegrams."

The man, staring at the strange order, withdrew.

"You are going to stop the rest of the guests?" I asked.

"Of course. They were coming to the wedding. There will be no wedding."

"And Jack Marston? You can't _telegraph_ this horrible thing to him!"

"Can't I? I shall."

"And Daphne? She is sitting in her room counting the minutes till he