and looked up into his face with wet,
gleaming eyes. It was very pitiful to see. The young man took her face
between his hands, kissed it, and pouring out a glass of wine, held it
to her lips. She put it aside with her hand and glanced up towards the
tall clock in the corner. My eyes, following hers, saw that the hands
pointed to a quarter to twelve.

The young Squire set down the glass hastily, stepped to the window and,
drawing aside the blue curtain, gazed out upon the night. Twice he
looked back at Cicely, over his shoulder, and after a minute returned to
the table. He drained the glass which the girl had declined, poured out
another, still keeping his eyes on her, and began to walk impatiently up
and down the room. And all the time Cicely's soft eyes never ceased to
follow him. Clearly there was need for hurry, for they had not laid
aside their travelling-cloaks, and once or twice the young man paused in
his walk to listen. At length he pulled out his watch, glanced from it
to the clock in the corner, put it away with a frown and, striding up to
the hearth, flung himself down in the arm-chair--the very arm-chair in
which I was seated.

As he sat there, tapping the hearth-rug with the toe of his thick
riding-boot and moving his lips now and then in answer to some
question from the young girl, I had time to examine his every feature.
Line by line they reproduced my own--nay, looking straight into his eyes
I could see through them into the soul of him and recognised that soul
for my own. Of all the passions there I knew that myself contained the
germs. Vices repressed in youth, tendencies to sin starved in my own
nature by lack of opportunity--these flourished in a rank growth.
I saw virtues, too, that I had once possessed but had lost by degrees in
my respectable journey through life--courage, generosity, tenderness of
heart. I was discovering these with envy, one by one, when he raised
his head higher and listened for a moment, with a hand on either arm of
the chair.

The next instant he sprang up and faced the door. Glancing at Cicely, I
saw her cowering down in her chair.

The young Squire had hardly gained his feet when the door flew open and
the figures of two men appeared on the threshold--Sir Felix Williams and
his only son, the father and brother of Cicely.

There, in the doorway, the intruders halted; but for an instant only.
Almost before the Squire could draw, his sweetheart's brother had