. You have
no luggage, and you are in evening-dress. And I remember now--you sent
two letters from the station!"

"I wished to be your escort."

Her gesture was almost one of scorn at the evasion.

"Why were you at the station at all? Evelyn had told you I was at
Bruges. And--you were dining out. I--I can't understand!"

She spoke with a frowning intensity, a strange queenliness, in which was
neither guilt nor confusion.

A voice spoke in Delafield's heart. "Tell her!" it said.

He bent nearer to her.

"Miss Le Breton, with what friends were you going to stay in Paris?"

She breathed quick.

"I am not a school-girl, I think, that I should be asked questions of
that kind."

"But on your answer depends mine."

She looked at him in amazement. His gentle kindness had disappeared. She
saw, instead, that Jacob Delafield whom her instinct had divined from
the beginning behind the modest and courteous outer man, the Jacob
Delafield of whom she had told the Duchess she was afraid.

But her passion swept every other thought out of its way. With dim agony
and rage she began to perceive that she had been duped.

"Mr. Delafield"--she tried for calm--"I don't understand your attitude,
but, so far as I do understand it, I find it intolerable. If you have
deceived me--"

"I have not deceived you. Lord Lackington is dying."

"But that is not why you were at the station," she repeated,
passionately. "Why did you meet the English train?"

Her eyes, clear now in the cold light, shone upon him imperiously.

Again the inner voice said: "Speak--get away from conventionalities.
Speak--soul to soul!"

He sat down once more beside her. His gaze sought the ground. Then, with
sharp suddenness, he looked her in the face.

"Miss Le Breton, you were going to Paris to meet Major Warkworth?"

She drew back.

"And if I was?" she said, with a wild defiance.

"I had to prevent it, that was all."

His tone was calm and resolution itself.

"Who--who gave you authority over me?"

"One may save--even by violence. You were too precious to be allowed to
destroy yourself."

His look, so sad and strong, the look of a deep compassion, fastened
itself upon her. He felt himself, indeed, possessed by a force not his
own, that same force which in its supreme degree made of St. Francis
"the great tamer of souls."

"Who asked you to be our judge? Neither I nor Major Warkworth owe you
anything."

"No. But I owed you help--as a man--a