suddenly he turned savage, and--and threatened me."

She glanced nervously into Rivington's face, but it told her nothing. He
looked merely thoughtful.

She went on more quietly.

"That drove me desperate, and I exclaimed, hardly thinking, 'I wouldn't
marry you if you were the only man in the world--which you are not!'
'Oh!' he said at once. 'There is another man, is there?' He didn't seem
to have thought that possible. And I--I was simply clutching at
straws--I told him 'Yes.' It was a lie, you know--the first deliberate
lie I think I have ever told since I came to years of discretion. There
isn't another man, or likely to be. That's just the trouble. If there
were, my mother wouldn't be so angry with me for refusing this chance of
marriage, brilliant though she thinks it. But I was quite desperate. Do
you think it was very wrong of me?"

"No," said Rivington deliberately, "I don't. I lie myself--when
necessary."

"He was furious," she said. "He swore that no other man should stand in
his way. And then--I don't know how it was; perhaps I wasn't very
convincing--he began to suspect that I had lied. That drove me into a
corner. I didn't know what to say or do. And then, quite suddenly, in my
extremity, I thought of you. I really don't know what made me. I didn't
so much as know if you were in town. And in a flash I thought of sending
that announcement to the paper. That would convince him if nothing else
would, and it would mean at least a temporary respite. It was a mad
thing to do, I know. But I thought you were elderly and level-headed and
a confirmed bachelor and--and a sort of cousin as well----"

"To the tenth degree," murmured Rivington.

"So I told him," she hurried on, unheeding, "that we were engaged, and
it was just going to be announced. When he heard that, he lost his head.
I really think he was mad for the moment. He sprang straight at me like
a wild beast, and I--I simply turned and fled. I'm pretty nimble, you
know, when--when there are mad bulls about." Her quick smile flashed
across her face and was gone. "That's all," she said. "I tore up to my
room, and scribbled that paragraph straight away. I dared not wait for
anything. And then I wrote to you. You had my letter with the paper this
morning."

"Yes, I had them." Rivington spoke absently. She had a feeling that his
eyes were fixed upon her without seeing her. "So that's all, is it?" he
said slowly.

Again nervously her hands moved beneath