pleasure in torturing her? Do you hate
children--or only Dolly?'

He made a little gesture of impatient helplessness. 'Oh, if you mean
to go on asking questions like that--' he said, 'of course I don't
hate your poor little sister. I tell you I'm sorry she took it
seriously--very sorry. And--and, if there's anything I can do to make
it up to her somehow; any--any amends, you know----'

The hardship, as he felt at the time, of his peculiar position was
that it obliged him to offer such a lame excuse for his treatment of
Dolly. Without the motive he had had for his conduct, it must seem
dictated by some morbid impulse of cruelty--whereas, of course, he had
acted quite dispassionately, under the pressure of a necessity--which,
however, it was impossible to explain to Mabel.

'I suppose "amends" mean caramels or chocolates,' said Mabel;
'chocolates to compensate for making a child shrink for days from
those who loved her! She was fretting herself ill, and we could do
nothing for her: a very little more and it might have killed her.
Perhaps your sense of humour would have been satisfied by that? If it
had not been for a friend--almost a stranger--who was able to see what
we were all blind to, that a coward had been practising on her fears,
we might never have guessed the truth till--till it was too late!'

'I see now,' he said; 'I thought there must be someone at the bottom
of this; someone who, for purposes of his own, has contrived to put
things in the worst light for me. If you can condescend to listen to
slanderers, Mabel, I shall certainly not condescend to defend myself.'

'Oh, I will tell you his name,' she said, 'and then even you will have
to own that he had no motive for doing what he did but natural
goodness and kindness. I doubt even if he has ever met you in his
life; the man who rescued our Dolly from what you had made her is Mr.
Mark Ashburn, the author of 'Illusion' (her expression softened
slightly, from the gratitude she felt, as she spoke his name, and
Caffyn noted it). 'If you think he would stoop to slander _you_---- But
what is the use of talking like that? You have owned it all. No
slander could make it any worse than it is!'

'If you think as badly of me as that,' said Caffyn, who had grown
deadly pale, 'we can meet no more, even as acquaintances.'

'That would be my own wish,' she replied.

'Do you mean,' he asked huskily, 'that--that everything is to be over
between us? Has it really come t