word, of that sort between you, you can all the
more drop him."

"But you said a moment ago that I should all the more in the other
case--that of there _being_ something!"

He brushed away her logic-chopping. "If you're so keen then for past
remarks I take up your own words--I accept your own terms for your
putting an end to Mr. Crimble." To which, while, turning pale, she said
nothing, he added: "You recognise that you profess yourself ready----"

"Not again to see him," she now answered, "if you tell me the picture's
safe? Yes, I recognise that I _was_ ready--as well as how scornfully
little you then were!"

"Never mind what I then was--the question's of what I actually am, since
I close with you on it The picture's therefore as safe as you please,"
Lord Theign pursued, "if you'll do what you just now engaged to."

"I engaged to do nothing," she replied after a pause; and the face she
turned to him had grown suddenly tragic. "I've no word to take back, for
none passed between us; but I _won't_ do what I mentioned and what you
at once laughed at Because," she finished, "the case is different."

"Different?" he almost shouted--"_how_, different?"

She didn't look at him for it, but she was none the less strongly
distinct "He has _been_ here--and that has done it He knows," she
admirably emphasised.

"Knows what I think of him, no doubt--for a brazen young prevaricator!
But what else?"

She still kept her eyes on a far-off point. "What he will have
seen--that I feel we're too good friends."

"Then your denial of it's false," her father fairly thundered--"and you
_are_ infatuated?"

It made her the more quiet. "I like him very much."

"So that your row about the picture," he demanded with passion, "has
been all a blind?" And then as her quietness still held her: "And his a
blind as much--to help him to get _at_ you?"

She looked at him again now. "He must speak for himself. I've said what
I mean."

"But what the devil _do_ you mean?" Lord Theign, taking in the hour, had
reached the door as in supremely baffled conclusion and with a sense of
time lamentably lost.

Their eyes met upon it all dreadfully across the wide space, and,
hurried and incommoded as she saw him, she yet made him still stand a
minute. Then she let everything go. "Do what you like with the picture!"

He jerked up his arm and guarding hand as before a levelled blow at his
face, and with the other hand flung open the door, having done