onversation so badly that night that Mrs.
Ross observed, uneasily, that she was sure Audrey had taken a chill:

'For she is quite flushed, John,' she continued anxiously, 'and I
noticed her shiver more than once. She has overheated herself in that
long walk, and then being caught in that heavy rain has done the
mischief.'

Dr. Ross looked at his daughter. Perhaps, in spite of his short-sight,
he was more observant than his wife, for he took the girl's face between
his hands:

'Go to bed, my child,' he said kindly, 'and I will finish that game of
chess with your mother;' and Audrey, with a grateful kiss, obeyed him.
But as Dr. Ross placed himself opposite his wife he seemed a little
absent, as though he were listening in vain for something. For it was
Audrey's habit to sing snatches of some gay tune as she mounted the
stairs. But to-night there was no 'Widow Miller'; it was the Doctor who
hummed the refrain to himself, as he captured an unwary pawn:

'When ye bind up the sheaves, leave out a few grains
To the heart-broken widow who never complains.'

Audrey felt that night as though she should never sing again--as though
she had committed some crime that must for ever separate her from her
old happy self.

To most people this remorse for an unconscious fault would have seemed
morbid and exaggerated. Thousands of girls have to inflict this sort of
pain at least once in their lives; the wrong man loves them, and the
disastrous 'No' must be spoken. Audrey had not even said 'No,' for
nothing had been asked her--she had only had to listen to a declaration
of love, an honest, manly confession, that had been wrung from the
speaker's lips. Wherein, then, did the blame consist? and why was Audrey
shedding such bitter tears as she sat by her window that night looking
over the dark garden? For a hundred complex reasons, too involved and
intricate to disentangle in one brief hour.

Audrey was accusing herself of blindness--of wilful and foolish
blindness. She ought to have seen, she must have seen, to what all this
was tending. Again and again Mr. Blake had shown her quite plainly the
extent of her influence over him. Could she not have warned him in time
to prevent this most unhappy declaration? Would it not have been kinder
to have drawn back in the first months of their intimacy, and have
interposed some barrier of dignified reserve that would have kept him
silent for ever? But no! she had drawn him on: not by c