e smiled (grinned would be the
truer way of putting it, with such a mouth as hers); took a few steps on
tiptoe to look after him; turned back again, and suddenly burst into a
violent fit of crying. I am not quite so easily taken in as Armadale,
and I saw what it all meant plainly enough.

"'To-morrow,' I thought to myself, 'you will be in the park again, miss,
by pure accident. The next day, you will lead him on into proposing
to you for the second time. The day after, he will venture back to the
subject of runaway marriages, and you will only be becomingly confused.
And the day after that, if he has got a plan to propose, and if your
clothes are ready to be packed for school, you will listen to him.' Yes,
yes; Time is always on the man's side, where a woman is concerned, if
the man is only patient enough to let Time help him.

"I let her leave the place and go back to the cottage, quite unconscious
that I had been looking at her. I waited among the trees, thinking. The
truth is, I was impressed by what I had heard and seen, in a manner that
it is not very easy to describe. It put the whole thing before me in
a new light. It showed me--what I had never even suspected till this
morning--that she is really fond of him.

"Heavy as my debt of obligation is to her, there is no fear _now_ of
my failing to pay it to the last farthing. It would have been no small
triumph for me to stand between Miss Milroy and her ambition to be one
of the leading ladies of the county. But it is infinitely more, where
her first love is concerned, to stand between Miss Milroy and her
heart's desire. Shall I remember my own youth and spare her? No! She has
deprived me of the one chance I had of breaking the chain that binds me
to a past life too horrible to be thought of. I am thrown back into a
position, compared to which the position of an outcast who walks the
streets is endurable and enviable. No, Miss Milroy--no, Mr. Armadale; I
will spare neither of you.

"I have been back some hours. I have been thinking, and nothing has come
of it. Ever since I got that strange letter of Midwinter's last Sunday,
my usual readiness in emergencies has deserted me. When I am not
thinking of him or of his story, my mind feels quite stupefied. I, who
have always known what to do on other occasions, don't know what to do
now. It would be easy enough, of course, to warn Major Milroy of his
daughter's proceedings. But the major is fond of his daughter; Armadal