d, as she admitted, insisted upon him carrying
out an obligation which would cost him something, not because she took
pleasure in seeing him do what was honourable, but to preserve the
credit of another man, and now it was with intense repugnance she
recognised that there was apparently no escaping from the one she had
incurred. The man's attitude was perfectly natural and logical. She
had promised to marry him, and he had saddled himself with a load of
debt on her account, but the slight pity and tenderness she had felt
for him a few minutes earlier had utterly gone. Indeed, she felt she
almost hated him. His face had grown hard and almost brutal, and there
was a look she shrank from in his eyes.

Then she rose.

"Do you wish to speak to Mrs. Hastings?" she asked.

Hawtrey smiled rather grimly. "No," he said, "if she'll excuse me, I
don't think I do. If you tell her you have been successful, she'll
probably be quite content."

Agatha went out without another word, and Hawtrey lighted his pipe and
stretched himself out in his chair, when he heard the waggon drive away
a few minutes later. He did not like Mrs. Hastings, and had a
suspicion that she had no great regard for him, but he was conscious of
a somewhat grim satisfaction. There was, though it seldom came to the
surface, a taint of crude brutality in his nature, and it was active
now. When Agatha had first come out the change in her had been a shock
to him, and it would not have cost him very much to let her go. Since
then, however, her coldness and half-perceived disdain had angered him,
and the interview which was just over had left him in an unpleasant
mood. Though this was, perhaps, the last thing he would have expected,
it had stirred him to desire. It was consoling to feel that he could
exact the fulfilment of her promise from the girl. His face grew
coarser as he assured himself of it, but he had, as it happened, never
realised the shiftiness and instability of his own character. It was
his misfortune that the impulses which swayed him one day had generally
changed the next.

This became apparent when, having occasion to drive in to the elevators
on the railroad a week later, he called at a store to make one or two
purchases. The man who kept it laid a package on the counter.

"I wonder if you'd take this along to Miss Creighton as a favour," he
said. "She wrote for the things, and Elliot was to take them out, but
I guess he forgot; a