"No," she replied. "No! It was my fault. I ought never to have become engaged to you; for I never loved you, even at the beginning. Oh, it is no use shirking the truth now," she went on, as Gordon rose with a cry of pain. "I never loved you. I realised that very soon after we were engaged. I had always liked you. I liked you better than any man I had met, and so in time I thought I might come to love you as well. I don't know whether I ever should have reached that if I had been left alone. But you made it impossible. You would not see that I had faults and caprices. You would not see that those very faults pleased me, that I meant to keep them, that I did not want to change. No! Whenever you came to me, I always felt as if I was being lifted up reverently and set on a very high and a very small pedestal. And there I had to stand, with my heels together, and my toes turned out, in an attitude of decorum until you had gone. Well, you want people with flat heels to enjoy that. I always wore high ones, and the attitude tired me." Instinctively she stretched one foot out as she spoke. The sparkle of the firelight on the buckle caught Gordon's eye, and he saw that she was wearing thin kid slippers with a strap across the instep. "You must be wet through," he exclaimed. "No," she answered. "I rode to the head of the Pass, and left the horse tied up to the footbridge over the stream. It was dry enough the rest of the way." "You rode over here!" he exclaimed. "Then they must have known you were coming?" "Who must have known?" she asked, in a sudden alarm. "Your father and your aunt. She is staying with you still, I suppose." "Yes. But they knew nothing, of course. My father had some people to dinner to-night. I left them early, saying that I was tired. I should have had no time to change if I had thought of it, as it was close on ten. I had told Martin, our groom, that I should want a horse--you know he would do anything for me--and he had it ready saddled. So I locked my room door, took the key with me, and came away just as I was." She stopped abruptly. The mention of her home aroused her to the consequences of her detection. Up till now the fact that Gordon had found her out had alone possessed her mind. Now, however, she was compelled to look forward. What would he do? He was to have married her in a week, in just seven days. Would he disclose the truth? She scanned his face for an answer to her conjectures. Gordon was leaning against the mantelshelf above her, and his eyes met her inquiring gaze. "Well?" he asked. "So you see," she faltered, "I am pretty safe for to-night; but to-morrow?" "To-morrow?" He seemed not to have grasped her drift. "Yes! To-morrow," she repeated. "What do you mean to do?" The question startled Gordon. He had been thinking of her, not of himself. Yes, to-morrow he would have to act. But how? "I don't know," he answered. "I must have time to think. I have not mastered today yet."