night, when we were quarrelling, Dormer Colville mentioned
your name. He was very much alarmed and very angry, so he perhaps spoke
the truth--by accident. He said that you had always known that I might
be the King of France. Many things happened, as I tell you, which are of
no importance, and which I have already forgotten, but that I remember
and always shall."

"I have always known," replied Miriam, "that Mr. Dormer Colville is a
liar. It is written on his face, for those who care to read."

A woman at bay is rarely merciful.

"And I thought for an instant," pursued Loo, "that such a knowledge
might have been in your mind that night, the last I was here, last
summer, on the river-wall. I had a vague idea that it might have
influenced in some way the reply you gave me then."

He had come a step nearer and was standing over her. She could hear his
hurried breathing.

"Oh, no," she replied, in a calm voice full of friendliness. "You are
quite wrong. The reason I gave you still holds good, and--and always
will."

In the brief silence that followed this clear statement of affairs,
they both heard the rattle of the iron gate by the seawall. Sep and his
father were coming. Loo turned to look toward the hall and the front
door, dimly visible in the shadow of the porch. While he did so Miriam
passed her hand quickly across her face. When Loo turned again and
glanced down at her, her attitude was unchanged.

"Will you look at me and say that again?" he asked, slowly.

"Certainly," she replied. And she rose from her chair. She turned and
faced him with the light of the hall-lamp upon her. She was smiling and
self-confident.

"I thought," he said, looking at her closely, "as I stood behind you,
that there were tears in your eyes."

She went past him into the hall to meet Sep and his father, who were
already on the threshold.

"It must have been the firelight," she said to Barebone as she passed
him.

A minute later Septimus Marvin was shaking him by the hand with a vague
and uncertain but kindly grasp.

"Sep came running to tell me that you were home again," he said,
struggling out of his overcoat. "Yes--yes. Home again to the old place.
And little changed, I can see. Little changed, my boy. Tempora mutantur,
eh? and we mutamur in illis. But you are the same."

"Of course. Why should I change? It is too late to change for the better
now."

"Never! Never say that. But we do not want you to change. We looked fo