ruins at dusk to-morrow, to see one who
needs your forgiveness, even if you must refuse him your pity? P. M."

As she reads the tears rush into her eyes, half blinding her; the
sorrowful pleading words grow dim and indistinct.

"How he must have suffered," she says to herself, "to have changed like
this!" Masterful Power, who used always to take obedience for granted!
There is something pitiful in it that goes straight to the tender
woman's heart, loyal to its old traditions.

As she was putting the paper into the bosom of her dress, the
drawing-room door opens, and Brian Beresford enters, followed by her
father. Brian's eyes at once seek her where she stands beside the open
window, her fingers playing nervously with the tell-tale scrap of paper.

His face darkens at once, and she knows that he has seen and understood.

CHAPTER IX.

Never has time passed so slowly to Honor Blake. All the morning she
goes about her work with a listless preoccupied air that could not fail
to attract attention if there were any one to heed the girl or her
moods.

Perhaps Brian Beresford heeds them; but Honor never gives a thought to
him. She would be glad if he would go away and leave her to herself;
but since he makes no such offer, she puts up with him.

And now, in the late afternoon, she sits down at the piano, more to
pass the time than to amuse their guest. In truth, as she plays she
forgets him altogether. The music, now low and sweet, now wild and
martial, soothes her and brings back some of her lost nerve.

Brian Beresford, looking and listening, frowns, and then sighs. She is
an enigma to him, this stately, contradictory Irish girl, with her
moods and her prejudices, and, above all, her reserve. He has met no
one quite like her. The women of his world are of a totally different
type--he can understand them easily; but Honor he cannot understand.

He feels his heart soften as he looks at her. He is proud, and it has
jarred upon his pride terribly that a man like Power Magill should have
been preferred to him.

"And the chances are, now the fellow is in disgrace, she will cling to
him all the closer," he says to himself bitterly. He does not care to
own it, but in his heart he is savagely jealous of Power Magill.

Very softly is Honor playing now--a sort of dirge or lament for the
chief of a clan. Suddenly she stops, and her head droops low over the
keys. She has forgotten everything but the sore pain at her ow