"Here he comes, and now we will see how far I understand such
matters."

"Don't go, Edith," said Ada. "Pray don't go. If you go I shall go
with you. These things ought always to come naturally,--that is if
they come at all."

It did not "come" at that moment, for Edith was so far mistaken that
Captain Clayton, after saying a few words to the girls, passed on
out of the back-door, intent on special business. "What a wretched
individual he is," said Edith. "Fancy pinning one's character on
the doings of such a man as that. However, he will be back again
to dinner, and you will not be so hard upon him then with your
dusting-brush."

Before dinner the Captain did return, and found himself alone with
Edith in the kitchen. It was her turn on this occasion to send up
whatever meal in the shape of dinner Castle Morony could afford.
"There you have it, sir," she said, pointing to a boiled neck of
mutton, which had been cut from the remains of a sheep sent in to
supply the family wants.

"I see," said he. "It will make a very good dinner,--or a very bad
one, according to circumstances, as they may fall out before the
dinner leaves the kitchen."

"Then they will have to fall out very quickly," said Edith. But the
colour had flown to her face, and in that moment she had learned to
suspect the truth. And her mind flew back rapidly over all her doings
and sayings for the last three months. If it was so, she could never
forgive herself. If it was so, Ada would never forgive her. If it was
so, they two and Captain Yorke Clayton must be separated for ever.
"Well; what is it?" she said, roughly. The joint of meat had fallen
from her hands, and she looked up at Captain Clayton with all the
anger she could bring into her face.

"Edith," he said, "you surely know that I love you."

"I know nothing of the kind. There can be no reason why I should know
it,--why I should guess it. It cannot be so without grievous wrong on
your part."

"What wrong?"

"Base wrong done to my sister," she answered. Then she remembered
that she had betrayed her sister, and she remembered too how much of
the supposed love-making had been done by her own words, and not by
any spoken by Captain Clayton. And there came upon her at that moment
a remembrance also of that other moment in which she had acknowledged
to herself that she had loved this man, and had told herself that the
love was vain, and had sworn to herself that she would never stand
in Ad