he direct
charge--if he is repelled with loss--he does not on that account
retreat; but he resorts to artifice, to stratagem, to the mine, to the
sly and adroit approach."

Her courage did not fail, but she felt a chill when he talked in this
easy and sneering manner. She had liked him--a little--when he disclosed
his love so openly and so boldly, but now no ray of tenderness came from
her heart.

"I can give you more of the news of Richmond," said the Secretary, "and
this concerns you as intimately as the other. Perhaps I should refrain
from telling you, but I am jealous enough in my own cause to tell it
nevertheless. Gossip in Richmond--well, I suppose I must say it--has
touched your name, too. It links you with me."

"Mr. Sefton," she said in the old cold, level tones, "you spoke of my
changing, but I see that you have changed. Five minutes ago I thought
you a gentleman."

"If I am doing anything that seems mean to you I do it for love of you
and the desire to possess you. That should be a sufficient excuse with
any woman. Perhaps you do not realize that your position depends upon
me. You came here because I wrote something on a piece of paper. There
has been a whisper that you were once a spy in this city--think of it;
the name of spy does not sound well. Rumour has touched you but lightly,
yet if I say the word it can envelope and suffocate you."

"You have said that you love me; do men make threats to the women whom
they love?"

"Ah, it is not that," he pleaded. "If a man have a power over a woman he
loves, can you blame him if he use it to get that which he wishes?"

"Real love knows no such uses," she said, and then she rose from her
chair, adding:

"I shall not listen any longer, Mr. Sefton. You remind me of my
position, and it is well, perhaps, that I do not forget it. It may be,
then, that I have not listened to you too long."

"And I," he replied, "if I have spoken roughly I beg your pardon. I
could wish that my words were softer, but my meaning must remain the
same."

He bowed courteously--it was the suave Secretary once more--and then he
left her.

Lucia Catherwood sat, dry-eyed and motionless, for a long time, gazing
at the opposite wall and seeing nothing there. She asked herself now why
she had come back to Richmond. To be with Miss Grayson, her next of kin,
and because she had no other place? That was the reason she had given to
herself and others--but was it the whole reason?

Now she