s, the shrewd insight and knowledge
of the world which distinguished Geoffrey as a lawyer, when dealing with
the affairs of others, quite deserted him in this crisis of his own life
and that of the woman who worshipped him.

"Since I have been here," he said, "I have had made to me no less than
three appeals on your behalf and by separate people--by your father,
who fancies that you are pining for Owen Davies; by Owen Davies, who is
certainly pining for you; and by old Edward, intervening as a kind of
domestic _amicus curiae_."

"Indeed," said Beatrice, in a voice of ice.

"All these three urged the same thing--the desirability of your marrying
Owen Davies."

Beatrice's face grew quite pale, her lips twitched and her grey eyes
flashed angrily.

"Really," she said, "and have _you_ any advice to give on the subject,
Mr. Bingham?"

"Yes, Beatrice, I have. I have thought it over, and I think
that--forgive me again--that if you can bring yourself to it, perhaps
you had better marry him. He is not such a bad sort of man, and he is
well off."

They had been walking rapidly, and now they were reaching the spot known
as the "Amphitheatre," that same spot where Owen Davies had proposed to
Beatrice some seven months before.

Beatrice passed round the projecting edge of rock, and walked some way
towards the flat slab of stone in the centre before she answered.
While she did so a great and bitter anger filled her heart. She saw,
or thought she saw, it all. Geoffrey wished to be rid of her. He had
discerned an element of danger in their intimacy, and was anxious to
make that intimacy impossible by pushing her into a hateful marriage.
Suddenly she turned and faced him--turned like a thing at bay. The last
red rays of the sunset struck upon her lovely face made more lovely
still by its stamp of haughty anger: they lay upon her heaving
breast. Full in the eyes she looked him with those wide angry eyes of
hers--never before had he seen her so imperial a mien. Her dignity and
the power of her presence literally awed him, for at times Beatrice's
beauty was of that royal stamp which when it hides a heart, is a
compelling force, conquering and born to conquer.

"Does it not strike you, Mr. Bingham," she said quietly, "that you are
taking a very great liberty? Does it not strike you that no man who is
not a relation has any right to speak to a woman as you have spoken to
me?--that, in short, you have been guilty of what in most pe