Mr. Bradfield commanded rather than invited Chris to be seated, and planted himself in a rather menacing than lover-like attitude before her. He had just remembered, luckily for him, that he must tone down his martinet-like manner, as he had no claim whatever on the girl to give him a right to be offended. “So you’ve found a sweetheart?” he began, in a voice which he had subdued to the pitch of a confidential _tête-à-tête_, but which betrayed his feelings more clearly than he had intended. A bright pink blush rose in the pale face of Chris to the very roots of her hair. She hesitated a moment before replying, but her hesitation was not of a kind to inspire her interlocutor with hopeful feelings. She looked frightened, but she looked also as if she did not mean to be bullied. He did not wait for her to reply before he said: “Did you tell your mother what I said to you the other day?” Chris just glanced up into his face, and resolved not to pretend to misunderstand. “No, Mr. Bradfield.” “Why not?” “It would make no difference.” “You’ve found someone else you like better?” Again Chris hesitated. She had grown very white, and was chilled by a fear of this man. There was something hard, something cruel in his manner, which let her, for the first time, into the secret of those qualities of doggedness and remorselessness in his nature, which had helped him to get on in the world. She rose quickly, with the feeling that she could hold her own better at her full height, than when she was under the direct fire of those strange eyes. She was in terror lest he should find out who her companion had been on her walk through the park that afternoon. The truth was that it had been Mr. Richard, who, after evidently lying in wait for her among the trees, had accompanied her a little way, as usual in silence, but with a manner in which there was no longer any attempt at concealment of the fact that he loved her. But this was the one fact beyond all others which Chris was anxious to hide from Mr. Bradfield. For the unhappy Mr. Richard would certainly be made to suffer for it, if his guardian had any suspicion that he was his rival. Mr. Bradfield, impatient at her silence, spoke again: “I suppose you will think I have no right to ask you such questions; but you are under my roof. If I cannot be your accepted husband, I am, at any rate for the time, your guardian, and I hear that you meet someone else,” added he, his tone betraying the jealous anger that he felt. Now Chris knew what his information was, and who his informant had been. She turned to him quickly, and laughed uneasily. “Lilith told you; she saw me in the park.” Then, with a fast beating heart, dreading the answer, she asked, “Didn’t she say who it was?” “She said she didn’t know. But perhaps it’s some plot between you girls, and she knows his name as well as you do.”