he cared for Lucy as much as he
could care for anybody; but the fact is he wants to marry another
woman, and he couldn't bear to see her married to another man."

"Oh, I say, you know--"

"It sounds incredible. But you don't know how utterly I distrust that
man. He's false through and through. There's nothing sound in him
except his intellect. I wish you'd never known him. He's been the
cause of all your--your suffering, and Lucy's too. You might have been
married long ago if it hadn't been for him."

"No, Kitty. I don't think that."

"You might, really. If he hadn't been in the way she would have known
that she cared for you and let you know it, too. But nothing that he
ever did or didn't do comes up to this."

"The truth is, Kitty, he thinks I'm rather a bad lot, you know."

"My dear Keith, he thinks that if _he_ doesn't marry Lucy he'd rather
you didn't. He certainly hit on the most effectual means of preventing
it."

"Oh, did he! He doesn't know me. I shall marry her whatever Sir
Wilfrid Spence says. If she's ill, all the more reason why I should
look after her. I'm only afraid lest--lest--"

She knew what he thought and could not say--lest it should not be for
very long.

"There are some things," he said quietly, "that _can't_ be taken away
from me."

Kitty was silent; for she knew what things they were.

"You can trust her to me, Kitty?"

"I can indeed."

And so on Sunday the great man came down.

It was over in half an hour. That half-hour Keith spent in pacing up
and down the library, the place of so many dear and tender and
triumphant memories. They sharpened his vision of Lucy doomed, of her
sweet body delivered over to the torture.

He did not hear Kitty come in till she laid her hand upon his arm. He
turned as if at the touch of destiny.

"Don't Keith, for Goodness' sake. It's all right. Only--he wants to
see you."

Sir Wilfrid Spence stood in the morning-room alone. He looked very
grave and grim. He had a manner, a celebrated manner that had
accomplished miracles by its tremendous moral effect. It had helped to
set him on his eminence and he was not going to sacrifice it now. He
fixed his gaze on the poet as he entered and held him under it for
the space of half a minute without speaking. He seemed, this master of
the secrets of the body, to be invading despotically the province of
the soul. It struck Rickman that the great specialist was passing
judgement on him, to see whether in a