d him. But he could not speak of love after what he
had just told her. He looked back when he reached the door, and saw her
standing where he had left her. She had raised the hand he had kissed to
her lips.

That was three days ago. Since then he had not dared to go and see her.
He could not ask her to marry him when he was within a few days of the
time when he was bound in so-called honor to give Lord Newhaven
satisfaction. He certainly could not be in her presence again without
asking her. The shadows of the last weeks had suddenly become ghastly
realities once more. The roar of Niagara drowned all other sounds. What
was he going to do? What was he going to do in the predicament towards
which he had been drifting so long, which was now actually upon him? Who
shall say what horror, what agony of mind, what frenzied searching for a
way of escape, what anguish of baffled love crowded in on Hugh's mind
during those last days? At the last moment he caught at a straw, and
wrote to Lord Newhaven offering to fight him. He did not ask himself
what he should do if Lord Newhaven refused. But when Lord Newhaven did
refuse his determination, long unconsciously fostered, sprang full-grown
into existence in a sudden access of passionate anger and blind rage.

"He won't fight, won't he! He thinks I will die like a rat in a trap
with all my life before me. I will not. I offered him a fair chance of
revenging himself--I would have fired into the air--and if he won't take
it is his own look-out, damn him! He can shoot me at sight if he likes.
Let him."

CHAPTER XXXII

On ne peut jamais dire.
"Fontaine je ne boirai jamais de ton eau."

If we could choose our ills we should not choose suspense. Rachel aged
perceptibly during these last weeks. Her strong white hands became
thinner; her lustreless eyes and haggard face betrayed her. In years
gone by she had said to herself, when a human love had failed her, "I
will never put myself through this torture a second time. Whatever
happens I will not endure it again."

And now she was enduring it again, though in a different form. There is
an element of mother-love in the devotion which some women give to men.
In the first instance it had opened the door of Rachel's heart to Hugh,
and had gradually merged, with other feelings, and deepened into the
painful love of a woman not in her first youth for a man of whom she is
not sure.

Rachel was not sure of Hugh. Of