appealing look.

"It is n't true," she insisted, desperately; but her voice was broken,
and she sobbed out her words in her fright. "It is n't true! It is n't
true! You want to frighten me." And all at once she ran to Ralph Gowan
like a child, and caught hold of his arm with her pretty, shaking
hands. "Mr. Gowan," she said, "you know, don't you? and you won't--you
won't--Oh, where is Aimee? I want Aimee! Aimee is n't like the rest of
you! _She_ would have made me go home without being so cruel as this."
And the next minute she turned so white and staggered so, that Dolly ran
to her, and Gowan was obliged to take her in his arms.

"Tell her that what I have said is true," said Dolly, crying. "She will
begin to understand then."

And so, while he held her, panting and sobbing and clinging to him,
Gowan told her all that he had learned. He was as brief as possible and
as tender as a woman. His heart so warmed toward the pretty, lovable,
passionately frightened creature, that his voice was far from steady as
he told his story.

She did not rebel an instant longer, then. Her terror, under the shock,
rendered her only helpless and hysterical. She had so far lost control
over herself that she would have believed anything they had chosen to
tell her.

"Take me away," she cried, whitening and shivering, all her bright,
pretty color gone, all her wilful petulance struck down at a blow. "Take
me home,--take me home to Aimee. I want to go away from here before he
comes. I want to go home and die."

How they got her down-stairs and into the carriage, Dolly scarcely
knows. It was enough that they got her there and knew she was safe. Upon
the table in the room above they had left a note directed to Mr. Gerald
Chandos,--Dolly had directed it and Dolly had written it.

"Is there pen and ink here?" she had asked Gowan; and when he had
produced the articles, she had bent over the table and dashed a few
lines off with an unsteady yet determined hand.

"There!" she had said, when she closed the envelope. "Mr. Chandos will
go to Brussels, I think, and he will understand why he goes alone, and,
for my part, I incline to the belief that he will not trouble us again."

And in five minutes more they were driving toward Bloomsbury Place.

But now the first excitement was over, Dolly's nerve began to fail her.
Now that Mollie was safe, she began to think of Griffith. It seemed a
cruel trick of fortune's to try his patience so sharply ju