e of supreme complacence.
"I may be the villain of the piece," he observed, "but I have no desire
to be melodramatic. I have come over here to talk to you quietly and
sensibly about the future. Of course if you--"

"What have you to do with my future?" she thrust in fiercely. She would
have given all she had to be calm at that moment, but calmness was
beyond her. Though her fear had utterly departed, she was quivering with
indignation from head to foot.

Hunt-Goring kept his face turned downwards towards the swirl of water
that leaped by them. He was quite plainly prepared for the question.

"Since you ask me," he responded coolly, "I should say--a good deal."

"In what way?" she demanded.

She could see that he was still smiling--that maddening, perpetual
smile, and she thought that her sheer abhorrence of the man would choke
her. But with all her throbbing strength she held herself in check.

He did not answer her at once. She waited, compelling herself to
silence.

At length quite calmly he turned and faced her. "Well now, Olga, listen
to me," he said. "I am a good deal older than you are, but I am still
capable of a certain amount of foolishness. What I am now going to say
to you, I have wanted to say for some time, but you have been so
absurdly shy with me that--as you perceive--I have been obliged to
resort to strategy to obtain a hearing."

He paused, for Olga had suddenly gripped the rail as if she needed
support. Her face was deathly, but out of it the pale eyes blazed in
fierce questioning.

"What do you mean?" she said. "What strategy?"

He laid his hand upon hers and gripped it hard. "Don't be hysterical!"
he said. "I am paying you the compliment of treating you like a woman of
sense."

She shrank away from him, but he continued to grip her hand with brutal
force till the pain of it reached her consciousness and sent the blood
upwards to her face. Then he let her go.

"Yes," he said coolly, "I have been laying my mine for some time now. It
has not been particularly easy or particularly pleasant, but since I
considered you worth a little trouble I did not grudge it. The long and
the short of it is this: I fell in love with you last winter. You may
remember that I caught your brothers poaching on my ground, and you came
to me to beg them off. Well, I granted your request--for a
consideration. You may remember the consideration also. You had been at
great pains to snub me until that episode. I ma