der.

"Do tell me," he urged. I was silent. He pressed me further. In my
fancy, both hand and voice shook with his sympathy.

"He had a step-daughter," said I at last.

"Yes? Yes?"

"I loved her. That was all."

His hand dropped from my shoulder. I remained standing, stooping,
thinking only of her whom I had lost for ever. The silence was intense.
I could hear the wind sighing in the oaks without, the logs burning
softly away at my feet And so we stood until the voice of Rattray
recalled me from the deck of the Lady Jermyn and my lost love's side.

"So that was all!"

I turned and met a face I could not read.

"Was it not enough?" cried I. "What more would you have?"

"I expected some more-foul play!"

"Ah!" I exclaimed bitterly. "So that was all that interested you! No,
there was no more foul play that I know of; and if there was, I don't
care. Nothing matters to me but one thing. Now that you know what that
is, I hope you're satisfied."

It was no way to speak to one's host. Yet I felt that he had pressed me
unduly. I hated myself for my final confidence, and his want of sympathy
made me hate him too. In my weakness, however, I was the natural prey
of violent extremes. His hand flew out to me. He was about to speak.
A moment more and I had doubtless forgiven him. But another sound
came instead and made the pair of us start and stare. It was the soft
shutting of some upstairs door.

"I thought we had the house to ourselves?" cried I, my miserable nerves
on edge in an instant.

"So did I," he answered, very pale. "My servants must have come back. By
the Lord Harry, they shall hear of this!"

He sprang to a door, I heard his feet clattering up some stone stairs,
and in a trice he was running along the gallery overhead; in another
I heard him railing behind some upper door that he had flung open and
banged behind him; then his voice dropped, and finally died away. I was
left some minutes in the oppressively silent hall, shaken, startled,
ashamed of my garrulity, aching to get away. When he returned it was by
another of the many closed doors, and he found me awaiting him, hat in
hand. He was wearing his happiest look until he saw my hat.

"Not going?" he cried. "My dear Cole, I can't apologize sufficiently for
my abrupt desertion of you, much less for the cause. It was my man,
just come in from the show, and gone up the back way. I accused him of
listening to our conversation. Of course he denies it; but