ars approaching footsteps, until they are quite close to her.
Looking up, with a quick start, she finds herself face to face with
Roger.

The surprise is so sudden that she has not time to change color until
she has passed him. Involuntarily she moves more quickly, as though to
escape him, but he follows her, and standing right before her, compels
her to stop and confront him.

"One moment," he says. His tone is haughty, but his eyes are more
searching than unkind. "You meant what you said last evening?" he asks,
quickly, and there is a ring in his voice that tells her he will be glad
if she can answer him in the negative. Hearing it, she grows even paler,
and shrinks back from him.

"Have I given you any reason to doubt it?" she says, coldly.

"No--certainly not." His tone has grown even haughtier. "I wish,
however, to let you know I regret anything uncivil I may have said to
you on--that is--at our last interview."

"It is too late for regrets." She says this so low that he can scarcely
hear her.

"You are bent, then, upon putting an end to everything between us?"

"Yes." At this moment it seems impossible to her to answer him in
anything but a monosyllable. Her obstinacy angers him.

"Perhaps you are equally bent," he says, sneeringly, "upon marrying
Gower?"

I suppose he has expected an indignant denial to this question, because,
when silence follows it, he starts, and placing both his hands upon her
shoulders, draws her deliberately over to a side window, and stares into
her downcast face.

"Speak," he says roughly. "_Are_ you going to marry him?"

"Yes."

The word comes with difficulty from between her pale, dry lips.

"He has asked you?"

"He has."

"You were engaged to him even _before_ you broke off your engagement
with me?"

"Oh, _no_, NO!"

"Since when, then? Was it last evening he spoke to you?"

"Yes."

"After you had parted from me? Sharp work, upon my life."

He laughs--a short, unmirthful laugh--and taking his hands from her
shoulders, moves back from her, yet always with his eyes on her face.

"You should be glad," she says, slowly.

"No doubt. So he was your confidant--your father-confessor, was he? All
my misdemeanors were laid bare to him. And then came pity for one linked
to such an unsympathetic soul as mine, and then naturally came what pity
is akin to! It is a pretty story. And for its hero 'mine own familiar
friend.'" He laughs again.

She makes a movement as thou