he had gone up to Monifieth deliberately again to meet
her--to be drawn again beneath the spell of those wonderful eyes.

There was love in the man's heart. But sometimes it embittered him. It
did at that moment, as they strolled still onward over that carpet of
moss and fallen leaves. He had loved her, as he believed her to be a
woman with heart and soul too pure to harbour an evil thought. But her
story of the death of poor Bellairs, the man who had loved her, had
convinced him that his suspicions were, alas! only too well grounded.

CHAPTER XIV

WHAT CONFESSION WOULD MEAN

A SILENCE had fallen between the pair. Again Walter Fetherston glanced at
her.

She was an outdoor girl to the tips of her fingers. At shooting parties
she went out with the guns, not merely contenting herself, as did the
other girls, to motor down with the luncheon for the men. She never got
dishevelled or untidy, and her trim tweed skirt and serviceable boots
never made her look unwomanly. She was her dainty self out in the country
with the men, just as in the pretty drawing-room at Hill Street, while
her merry laugh evoked more smiles and witticisms than the more studied
attempts at wit of the others.

At that moment she had noticed the change in the man she had so gradually
grown to love, and her heart was beating in wild tumult.

He, on his part, was hating himself for so foolishly allowing her to
steal into his heart. She had lied to him there, just as she had lied to
him at Biarritz. And yet he had been a fool, and had allowed himself to
be drawn back to her side.

Why? he asked himself. Why? There was a reason, a strong reason. He loved
her, and the reason he was at that moment at her side was to save her, to
rescue her from a fate which he knew must sooner or later befall her.

She made some remark, but he only replied mechanically. His countenance
had, she saw, changed and become paler. His lips were pressed together,
and, taking a cigar from his case, he asked her permission to smoke, and
viciously bit off its end. Something had annoyed him. Was it possible
that he held any suspicion of the ghastly truth?

The real fact, however, was that he was calmly and deliberately
contemplating tearing her from his heart for ever as an object of
suspicion and worthless. He, who had never yet fallen beneath a woman's
thraldom, resolved not to enter blindly the net she had spread for him.
His thoughts were hard and bitter--the thou