,
and--and a little part of it fell in, grazing your shoulder. It is a
deep and painful scratch, I can well understand; but it is only a
scratch, I can assure you."

"Oh, it has ruined my dress!" cried the girl, in anger and dismay, never
thinking for an instant of doubting the truth of his assertion. "I can
not appear in the ball-room again. No one must know that we were here
together," she went on, hastily--"not one human soul! You must give out
that I--I became suddenly indisposed and went to my own room."

"Yes, I think your suggestions are best," he agreed.

The guests received this explanation of the sudden absence of the beauty
of the ball with regret, and more than one whisper went the rounds of
the room how this seemed to disturb handsome Harry Kendal, for his face
was very pale, and he seemed so nervous.

At the earliest opportunity Harry Kendal slipped away from the merry
throng and up to Dorothy's apartment, hastily knocking at the door.

She opened it herself.

"Step out into the corridor," he said, sternly; "I want to speak to
you."

And trembling with apprehension caused by his stern manner, Dorothy
obeyed.

She could see, even in the dim light, that his face was white as death.

"I have come to have an understanding with you, Dorothy Glenn!" he cried
hoarsely. "Your dastardly action of to-night has forever placed a
barrier between you and me! I am here to say this to you: here and now I
sever our betrothal! The same roof shall no longer shelter us both!
Either you leave this house to-night, or I'll go!"

CHAPTER XXII.

It was the most pitiful scene that pen could describe. The beautiful
young girl, in her dress of fleecy white, with the faded purple blossoms
on her breast entwined among the meshes of her disheveled golden hair,
crouching back among the green leaves, and the white-faced, handsome,
angry man clutching her white arm, crying out hoarsely that never again
should they both breathe the same air beneath that roof--that she must
leave Gray Gables within the hour, or he would.

"I did not know that I had done so terribly wrong," moaned the girl,
shrinking back from those angry, fiery eyes that glowered down so
fiercely into her own.

A laugh that was more horrible than the wildest imprecation could have
been broke from his lips.

"You seem to have a remarkably mixed idea of right and wrong," he
retorted, sternly, relaxing his hold and standing before her with rigid,
fold