comes to her."

"Hannah, I want you to go and tell her."

"I, Hugh! Why should I be picked out to do such a horrible thing?"

"My mother will not. Daphne has always known you. You have sense----"

"I will not. So that is the finish, Hugh. I haven't got a stone for a
heart. I would cut out my tongue rather than do it."

"Then, I must," he said, turned on his heels and made for the door.

Having reached it and flung it open, he looked back at me with his
distressed, scowling face. "This is how one's friends fail one in an
emergency!" he said.

His scorn, at the moment, was nothing to me, but I was beside myself
with sorrow and dismay. Daphne, with her sweet, small face lying among
her cushions, her dark eyes filled with visions of the lover who was
speeding to her, of the joyful life just opening before her--and
Tragedy, pitiless, relentless, awaiting her! Her messenger, oh so much
more cruel than the messenger of Death, crossing corridors, mounting
stairs, hurrying with the inevitableness of Fate upon her! Was there
nothing to be done? Was there no hand to save?

Hugh was right. Boy as he was, he was acting as a man should act. His
mother, who, to save her ears from the despairing cries of her child,
to avoid the painful explanation to invited guests, the perplexity of
interrupted plans, was willing that the marriage should continue, was
weak, wicked even, perhaps. But I found it in my heart to wish that she
might have her way, that the suffering, since there must be suffering,
should be, at any rate, postponed.

The engagement had been a short one, and circumstances had of late
limited my intercourse with the family; the bridegroom and I had met
but once. Yet now his handsome face rose before me--a face whose only
fault was that it was, perhaps, too handsome. I thought of the tales
Daphne's mother had told me of his extraordinary passion for the girl
with whom he had fallen in love at first sight. Women love love. No
woman is too old to thrill at the story of a lover's ardour. The man
was a sinner, no doubt; to Hugh he seemed a scoundrel; but--

I caught up with Hugh as he was going--very slowly going, poor
boy--round the last turning to his sister's room.

"Hughie," I gasped, breathless with my haste. "You are right--but don't
be brutal. Don't _kill_ the child. Listen. Instead of writing to Jack
Marston, let him come. Let him tell her himself. Give her a chance.
Give him one, even. It is a cruel business,