The girl was glad to find that the hall was empty when she crossed it again. She had no fancy for encountering the insolent looks (as she phrased it to herself) of Wyvis Brand and his hateful friends. But she had reckoned without her host. For when she reached the gate into the high-road, she found Mr. Brand leaning against it with his elbows resting on the topmost bar, and his eyes gloomily fixed on the distant landscape. He started when he saw her, raised his hat and opened the gate with punctilious politeness. Janetta bowed her thanks, but without any smile; she was not at all in charity with her cousin, Wyvis Brand. He allowed her to pass him, but before she had gone half a dozen yards, he strode after her and caught her up. "Will you let me have a few words with you?" he said, rather hoarsely. "Certainly, Mr. Brand." Janetta turned and faced him, still with the disapproving gravity upon her brow. "Can't we walk on for a few paces?" said Wyvis, with evident embarrassment. "I can say what I want to say better while we are walking. Besides, they can see us from the house if we stand here." Privately Janetta thought that this would be no drawback, but she did not care to make objections, so turned once more and walked on silently. "I want to speak to you," said the man, presently, with something of a shamefaced air, "about the little scene you came upon this afternoon----" "Yes," said Janetta. She did not know how contemptuously her lips curled as she said the word. "You came at an unfortunate moment," he went on, awkwardly enough. "I was about to interpose; I should not have allowed Jack Strangways to go too far. Of course you thought that I did not care." "Yes," said Janetta, straightforwardly. Wyvis bit his lip. "I am not quite so thoughtless of my son's welfare," he said, in a firmer tone. "There was enough in that glass to madden a child--almost to kill him. You don't suppose I would have let him take that?" "I don't know. You were offering no objection to it when I came in." "Do you doubt my word?" said Wyvis, fiercely. "No. I believe you, if you mean really to say that you were not going to allow your little boy to drink what Mr. Strangways offered him." "I do mean to say it"--in a tone of hot anger. Janetta was silent. "Have you nothing to say, Miss Colwyn?" "I have no right to express any opinion, Mr. Brand." "But I wish for it!" "I do not see why you should wish for it," said Janetta, coldly, "especially when it may not be very agreeable to you to hear." "Will you kindly tell me what you mean?" The words were civil, but the tone was imperious in the extreme. "I mean that whether you were going to make Julian drink that poisonous stuff or not, you were inflicting a horrible torture upon him," said Janetta, as hotly as Wyvis himself could have spoken. "And I cannot understand how you could allow your own child to be treated in that cruel way. I call it wicked to make a child suffer."