red thus to address you. And it
is plain to me now that there are reasons why he should not have spoken
before this. For one thing, you were alone with him; for another, you
are tired, exhausted. No doubt to-morrow he----"

"How dare you?" says she in a voice that startles him, a very low voice,
but vibrating with outraged pride. "How dare you thus insult me? You
seem to think--to think--that because--last night--he and I were kept
from our home by the storm----" She pauses; that old, first odd
sensation of choking now again oppresses her. She lays her hand upon the
back of a chair near her, and presses heavily upon it. "You think I have
disgraced myself," says she, the words coming in a little gasp from her
parched lips. "That is why you speak of things being at an end between
us. Oh----"

"You wrong me there," says the young man, who has grown ghastly.
"Whatever I may have said, I----"

"You meant it!" says she. She draws herself up to the full height of her
young, slender figure, and, turning abruptly, moves toward the door. As
she reaches it, she looks back at him. "You are a coward!" she says, in
a low, distinct tone alive with scorn. "A coward!"

CHAPTER XXVIII.

"I have seen the desire of mine eyes,
The beginning of love,
The season of kisses and sighs,
And the end thereof."

Miss Kavanagh put in no appearance at dinner. "A chill," whispered Lady
Baltimore to everybody, in her kindly, sympathetic way, caught during
that miserable drive yesterday. She hoped it would be nothing, but
thought it better to induce Joyce to remain quiet in her own room for
the rest of the evening, safe from draughts and the dangers attendant on
the baring of her neck and arms. She told her small story beautifully,
but omitted to add that Joyce had refused to come downstairs, and that
she had seemed so wretchedly low-spirited that at last her hostess had
ceased to urge her.

She had, however, spent a good deal of time arguing with her on another
subject--the girl's fixed determination to go home--"to go back to
Barbara"--next day. Lady Baltimore had striven very diligently to turn
her from this purpose, but all to no avail. She had even gone so far as
to point out to Joyce that the fact of her thus leaving the Court before
the expiration of her visit might suggest itself to some people in a
very unpleasant light. They might say she had come to the end of her
welcome there--been given her conge, in fact--