time
he cast a furtive look at Kitty, who had half started to her feet in
expectation of his coming to her before he went,--a look of appeal, or
deprecation, or reassurance, as she chose to interpret it, but after all
a look only.

She sank back in blank rejection of his look, and so remained motionless
as he led the way from the porch with a quick and anxious step. Since
those people came he had not openly recognized her presence, and now he
had left her without a word. She could not believe what she could not
but divine, and she was powerless to stir as the three moved down the
road towards the carriage. Then she felt the tears spring to her eyes:
she flung down her veil, and, swept on by a storm of grief and pride and
pain, she hurried, ran towards the grounds about the falls. She thrust
aside the boy who took money at the gate. "I have no money," she said
fiercely; "I'm going to look for my friends: they're in here."

But Dick and Fanny were not to be seen. Instead, as she fluttered wildly
about in search of them, she beheld Mr. Arbuton, who had missed her on
his return to the inn, coming with a frightened face to look for her.
She had hoped, somehow never to see him again in the world; but since it
was to be, she stood still and waited his approach in a strange
composure; while he drew nearer, thinking how yesterday he had silenced
her prophetic doubt of him: "I have one answer to all this; I love you."
Her faltering words, verified so fatally soon, recalled themselves to
him with intolerable accusation. And what should he say now? If
possibly,--if by some miracle,--she might not have seen what he feared
she must! One glance that he dared give her taught him better; and while
she waited for him to speak, he could not lure any of the phrases, of
which the air seemed full, to serve him.

"I wonder you came back to me," she said after an eternal moment.

"Came back?" he echoed, vacantly.

"You seemed to have forgotten my existence!"

Of course the whole wrong, if any wrong had been done to her, was tacit,
and much might be said to prove that she felt needlessly aggrieved, and
that he could not have acted otherwise than as he did; she herself had
owned that it must be an embarrassing position to him.

"Why, what have I done," he began, "what makes you think... For heaven's
sake listen to me!" he cried; and then, while she turned a mute
attentive face to him, he stood silent as before, like one who has lost
his