t, as though
expostulating, but makes no vehement effort to escape from his embrace.
Philip, his face lit up with passionate admiration, is gazing down into
the lovely one so near him, that scarcely seems to shrink from his open
homage. The merciless, cruel moon, betrays them all too surely.

Luttrell's pulses are throbbing wildly, while his heart has almost
ceased to beat. Half a minute--that is a long hour--passes thus; a few
more words from Philip, an answer from Molly. Oh, that he could hear!
And then Shadwell stoops until, from where Luttrell stands, his face
seems to grow to hers.

Tedcastle's teeth meet in his lip as he gazes spell-bound. A cold
shiver runs through him, as when one learns that all one's dearest,
most cherished hopes are trampled in the dust. A faint moisture stands
on his brow. It is the bitterness of death!

Presently a drop of blood trickling slowly down--the sickly flavor of
it in his mouth--rouses him. Instinctively he closes his eyes, as
though too late to strive to shut out the torturing sight, and, with a
deep curse, he presses his handkerchief to his lips and moves away as
one suddenly awakened from a ghastly dream.

In the doorway he meets Marcia; she, too, has been a witness of the
garden scene, and as he passes her she glances up at him with a curious
smile.

"If you wish to keep her you should look after her," she whispers, with
white lips.

"If she needs looking after, I do _not_ wish for her," he answers,
bitterly, and the next moment could kill himself, in that he has been
so far wanting in loyalty to his most disloyal love.

With his mind quite made up, he waits through two dances silently,
almost motionless, with his back against a friendly wall, hardly taking
note of anything that is going on around him, until such time as he can
claim another dance from Molly.

It comes at last: and, making his way through the throng of dancers, he
reaches the spot where, breathless, smiling, she sits fanning herself,
an adoring partner dropping little honeyed phrases into her willing
ear.

"This is our dance," Luttrell says, in a hard tone, standing before
her, with compressed lips and a pale face.

"Is it?" with a glance at her card.

"Never mind your card. I know it is ours," he says, and, offering her
his arm, leads her, not to the ball-room, but on to a balcony, from
which the garden can be reached by means of steps.

Before descending he says,--always in the same uncomprom