you
think I would do that."

"I seem to have known you very little all my life," said Hubert
bitterly. "I certainly do not understand you now. What can you get by
staying here?"

"Oh, nothing, of course!" she answered tranquilly.

"What is your scheme, Florence?"

"It is of no use telling you--you might interfere again."

The anguish of doubt and anxiety in his dark eyes, if she had looked at
him, would surely have moved her. But she did not look.

"I mean to stay here," she said quietly, "teaching Enid Vane, putting up
with aunt Leonora's impertinences as well as I can, until I get another
chance in the world. What that chance may be of course I cannot tell,
but I am certain that it will come."

"You can bear to stay in this house which I--I--infinitely less
blameworthy than yourself--can hardly endure to enter?"

"The world would not call you less blameworthy. I am glad that you are
so far on good terms with your conscience."

"Florence," he said, almost threateningly, "take care! I will not spare
you another time. If I find you involved in any other transaction of
which you ought to be ashamed, I will expose you. I will tell the world
the truth--that you were on the point of leaving England with Sydney
Vane when I--when I----"

"When you shot him," she said, without a trace of emotion manifest in
either face or voice, "and let Andrew Westwood bear the blame."

The young man winced as if he had received a blow.

"It was to shield you that I kept silence," he said, passionate
agitation showing itself in his manner. "It was to save your good name.
But even for your sake I would not have let the man suffer death. If we
had obtained no reprieve for him, I swear that I would have given myself
up and borne the punishment!"

"You were at work then? You tried to get the reprieve for him?" said his
sister, with the faintest possible touch of eagerness.

"I did indeed." Hubert's voice fell into a lower key, as if he were
trying, miserably enough, to justify to himself, rather than to her,
what he had done. "It would be almost useless to confess my own guilt.
It would be thought that I was beside myself. Who would believe
me--unless you--you yourself corroborated my story? The man Westwood was
a poacher, a thief, wretchedly poor and in ill-health; he has no
character to lose, no friends to consider. Besides, he was morally
guiltier than I. I know that he was lying in wait for Sydney Vane; I
know that he had re