speak to
me like this."

"Right or no right, I do," Ray answered. "If you refuse I shall not
spare you. Last night was only one incident of many. I break my faith
as a soldier by giving you this opportunity. Will you come?"

"I am waiting now for a carriage," Blenavon answered. "I have sent to
the house for one."

"You will not return to the house," Ray said shortly. "You will leave
here for the station, the station for London, and London for the
Continent. You do this, and I hold my peace. You refuse, and I see
Lord Chelsford and your father to-night."

From the first I knew that he would yield, but he did it with an ill
grace.

"I don't see why I should go," he said, sulkily.

"Either you and I together, or I alone, are going to catch the six
o'clock train to London," Ray said. "If I go alone you will be an exile
from England for the rest of your life, your name will be removed from
every club to which you belong, and you will have brought irreparable
disgrace upon your family. The choice is yours."

Blenavon turned towards the woman as though for aid. But she stood with
her back to him, pale and with a thin scornful smile upon her lips.

"The choice," Ray repeated, glancing at his watch, "is yours, but the
time is short."

"I will go," Blenavon said. "I was off in a day or two, anyway. Of
what you suspect me I don't know, and I don't care. But I will go."

Ray put his watch into his pocket. He turned to Mrs. Smith-Lessing.

"Better come too," he said quietly. "You have no more chance here.
Every one knows now who and what you are."

She looked at him with white expressionless face.

"It does not suit me to leave the neighbourhood at present," she said
calmly.

If she had been a man Ray would have struck her. I could see his white
teeth clenched fiercely together.

"It does not suit me," he said, in a low tone vibrate with suppressed
passion, "to have you here. You are a plague spot upon the place. You
have been a plague spot all your life. Whatever you touch you corrupt."

She shrank away for a moment. After all, she was a woman, and I hated
Ray for his brutality.

"What a butcher you are!" she said, looking at him curiously. "If ever
you should marry--God help the woman."

"There are women and women," he answered roughly. "As for you, you do
not count in the sex at all."

She turned away from him with a little shudder, and for the first time
during the interview she hid her face in her han