his life, or to yield her to another. In the chill morning
hour he had discovered that the choice lay before him, that he must
risk all or lose all: and he had decided. That decision he now
announced.

"I will make it possible," he said slowly, questioning in his mind
whether he could make terms with her--whether he dared make terms with
her. "I will make it possible," he repeated, still more slowly, and
with his eyes fixed on her face.

"If you could!" she cried, clasping her hands.

"I will!" he said, a sullen undertone in his voice. His eyes still
dwelt darkly on her. "If he raises an objection, I will fight
him--myself!"

She shrank from him. "Ah, but I can't ask that!" she cried, trembling.

"It is that or nothing."

"That or----"

"There is no other way," he said. He spoke with the same
ungraciousness; for, try as he would, and though the habit and the
education of a life cried to him to treat with her and make conditions,
he could not; and he was enraged that he could not.

The more as her quivering lips, her wet eyes, her quick mounting
colour, told of her gratitude. In another moment she might, almost
certainly she would, have said a word fit to unlock his lips. And he
would have spoken; and she would have pledged herself. But fate, in the
person of old Darby, intervened. Timely or untimely, the butler
appeared in the distant doorway, cried "Hist!" and, by a backward
gesture, warned them of some approaching peril.

"I fear----" she began.

"Yes, go!" Asgill replied, almost roughly. "He is coming, and he must
not find us together."

She fled swiftly, but the garden gate had barely closed on her skirts
before Payton issued from the courtyard. The Englishman paused an
instant in the gateway, his sword under his arm and a handkerchief in
his hand. Thence he looked up and down the road with an air of scornful
confidence that provoked Asgill beyond measure. The sun did not seem
bright enough for him, nor the air scented to his liking. Finally he
approached the Irishman, who, affecting to be engaged with his own
thoughts, had kept his distance.

"Is he ready?" he asked, with a sneer.

With an effort Asgill controlled himself. "He is not," he said.

"At his prayers, is he? Well, he'll need them."

"He is not, to my knowledge," Asgill replied. "But he is ill."

Payton's face lightened with a joy not pleasant to see. "A coward!" he
said coolly. "I am not surprised! Ill is he? Ay, I know that illness