looked at her without answering--without advancing a step, on his
side. There was an evil light in his eyes; his silence was the brute
silence that threatens dumbly. He had made up his mind never to see her
again, and she had entrapped him into an interview. He had made up his
mind to write, and there she stood forcing him to speak. The sum of
her offenses against him was now complete. If there had ever been the
faintest hope of her raising even a passing pity in his heart, that hope
would have been annihilated now.

She failed to understand the full meaning of his silence. She made her
excuses, poor soul, for venturing back to Windygates--her excuses to the
man whose purpose at that moment was to throw her helpless on the world.

"Pray forgive me for coming here," she said. "I have done nothing to
compromise you, Geoffrey. Nobody but Blanche knows I am at Windygates.
And I have contrived to make my inquiries about you without allowing
her to suspect our secret." She stopped, and began to tremble. She saw
something more in his face than she had read in it at first. "I got your
letter," she went on, rallying her sinking courage. "I don't complain
of its being so short: you don't like letter-writing, I know. But you
promised I should hear from you again. And I have never heard. And oh,
Geoffrey, it was so lonely at the inn!"

She stopped again, and supported herself by resting her hand on the
table. The faintness was stealing back on her. She tried to go on again.
It was useless--she could only look at him now.

"What do you want?" he asked, in the tone of a man who was putting an
unimportant question to a total stranger.

A last gleam of her old energy flickered up in her face, like a dying
flame.

"I am broken by what I have gone through," she said. "Don't insult me by
making me remind you of your promise."

"What promise?"'

"For shame, Geoffrey! for shame! Your promise to marry me."

"You claim my promise after what you have done at the inn?"

She steadied herself against the table with one hand, and put the other
hand to her head. Her brain was giddy. The effort to think was too much
for her. She said to herself, vacantly, "The inn? What did I do at the
inn?"

"I have had a lawyer's advice, mind! I know what I am talking about."

She appeared not to have heard him. She repeated the words, "What did
I do at the inn?" and gave it up in despair. Holding by the table, she
came close to him and laid her han