at is
what stimulates me. You will swagger to the end. You put the devil into
me. Half an hour ago I was jogging along the road, languid and bored to
extinction. And now----" He laughed outright in actual exultation. "By
Jove!" he cried out. "Things like this don't happen to a man in these
dull days! There's no such luck going about. We've gone back five
hundred years, and we've taken New York with us." His laugh shut off in
the middle, and he got up to thrust his heavy, congested face close to
hers. "Here you are, as safe as if you were in a feudal castle, and here
is your ancient enemy given his chance--given his chance. Do you think,
by the Lord, he is going to give it up? No. To quote your own words,
'you may place entire confidence in that.'"

Exaggerated as it all was, somehow the melodrama dropped away from it
and left bare, simple, hideous fact for her to confront. The evil in him
had risen rampant and made him lose his head. He might see his senseless
folly to-morrow and know he must pay for it, but he would not see
it to-day. The place was not a feudal castle, but what he said was
insurmountable truth. A ruined cottage on the edge of miles of marsh
land, a seldom-trodden road, and night upon them! A wind was rising
on the marshes now, and making low, steady moan. Horrible things had
happened to women before, one heard of them with shudders when they were
recorded in the newspapers. Only two days ago she had remembered that
sometimes there seemed blunderings in the great Scheme of things. Was
all this real, or was she dreaming that she stood here at bay, her back
against the chimney-wall, and this degenerate exulting over her, while
Rosy was waiting for her at Stornham--and at this very hour her father
was planning his journey across the Atlantic?

"Why did you not behave yourself?" demanded Nigel Anstruthers, shaking
her by the shoulder. "Why did you not realise that I should get even
with you one day, as sure as you were woman and I was man?"

She did not shrink back, though the pupils of her eyes dilated. Was it
the wildest thing in the world which happened to her--or was it not?
Without warning--the sudden rush of a thought, immense and strange,
swept over her body and soul and possessed her--so possessed her that
it changed her pallor to white flame. It was actually Anstruthers
who shrank back a shade because, for the moment, she looked so near
unearthly.

"I am not afraid of you," she said, in a clear