then at her brother. "I have thought such dreadful
things. I must be very bad. I wanted to run away. I wanted to die----"

"There, you hear, you hear," Decies cried hoarsely, spreading abroad
his hands, in sudden violence of appeal to Honoria. "For God's sake
help us! I am not aware whether you are a relation, or a friend, or
what. But I am convinced you can help, if only you choose to do so. And
I tell you she is just killing herself over this accursed marriage.
Some one's got at her and talked her into some wild notion of doing her
duty, and marrying money for the sake of her family."

"Oh! I say, damn it all," Lord Shotover exclaimed, smitten with genuine
remorse.

"And so she believes she's committing the seven deadly sins, and I
don't know what besides, because she rebels against this marriage and
is unhappy. Tell her it's absurd, it's horrible, that she should do
what she loathes and detests. Tell her this talk about duty is a blind,
and a fiction. Tell her she isn't wicked. Why, God in heaven, if we
were none of us more wicked than she is, this poor old world would be
so clean a place that the holy angels might walk barefoot along the
Piccadilly pavement there, outside, without risking to soil so much as
the hem of their garments! Make her understand that the only sin for
her is to do violence to her nature by marrying a man she's afraid of,
and for whom she does not care. I don't want to play a low game on Sir
Richard Calmady and steal that which belongs to him. But she doesn't
belong to him--she is mine, just my own. I knew that from the first day
I came to Whitney, and looked her in the face, Shotover. And she knows
it too, only she's been terrorised with all this devil's talk of duty."

So far the words had poured forth volubly, as in a torrent. Now the
speaker's voice dropped, and they came slowly, defiantly, yet without
hesitation.

"And so I asked her to go away with me, now, to-night, and marry me
to-morrow. I can make her happy--oh, no fear about that! And she would
have consented and gone. We'd have been away by now--if you and this
lady had not come just when you did, Shotover."

The gentleman addressed whistled very softly.

"Would you, though?" he said, adding meditatively:--"By George now,
who'd have thought of Connie going the pace like that!"

"Oh, Shotover, never tell, promise me you will never tell them!" the
poor child cried again. "I know it was wicked, but----"

"No, no, you are mi