rs with you?" she
said, playing for time.

"Don't fence, Anne," he said sternly. "Answer the question. Wait. I'll put
it in another form, and I want the truth. If you say to me that your
mother is deliberately forcing you into this marriage I'll believe you,
and I'll--I'll fight for you till I get you. I will not stand by and see
you sacrificed, even though you may appear to--"

"Stop, please. If you mean to ask _that_ question, I'll answer it in
advance. It is I, not my mother, who expects to marry Mr. Thorpe, and I am
quite old enough and wise enough to know my own mind. So you need not put
the question."

He drew nearer. The table separated them as they looked squarely into each
other's eyes through the fire-lit space that lay between.

"Anne, Anne!" he cried hoarsely. "You must not, you shall not do this
unspeakable thing! For God's sake, girl, if you have an atom of self-
respect, the slightest--"

"Don't begin that, Braden!" she cut in, ominously. "I cannot permit you or
any man to _say_ such things to me, no matter what you may think. Bear
that in mind."

"Don't you mind what I think about it, Anne?" he cried, his voice
breaking.

"See here, Braden," she said, in an abrupt, matter-of-fact manner, "it
isn't going to do the least bit of good to argue the point. I am pledged
to marry Mr. Thorpe and I shall do so if I live till the twenty-third of
next month. Provided, of course, that he lives till that day himself. I
have gone into it with my eyes open, as he says, and I am satisfied with
my bargain. I suppose you will hate me to the end of your days. But if you
think that I expect to hate myself, you are very much mistaken. Look! Do
you see these pearls? They were not included in the bargain, and I could
have gone on very well without them to the end of my term as the mistress
of this house, but I accepted them from my fiance to-day in precisely the
same spirit in which they were given: as alms to the undeserving. Your
grandfather did not want me to marry you. He is merely paying me to keep
my hands _off_. That's the long and the short of it. I am not in the least
deceived. You will say that I could--and should have told him to go to the
devil. Well, I'm sorry to have to tell you that I couldn't see my way
clear to doing that. I hope he _is_ listening behind the curtains. We
drove a hard bargain. He thought he could get off with a million. You must
remember that he had deliberately disinherited you,--that m