“Don’t you?” he said. “You are right, of course, and I am wrong. I can imagine circumstances under which all this would be a howling wilderness to me.” He looked at her very differently this time, with his eyes recklessly eloquent. She dropped her own eyes quickly, and said softly: “Can you?” They had strolled down the steps as they talked, and at their right hand a picturesque little alley, with a vista of fountain and statue against a grove of ilex-trees, led away from the more open space in front of the house. Down this alley, secluded and apparently deserted, Miss Pomeroy turned, as if unconsciously, before she spoke again. Julian followed her lead with an ugly smile on his face. Then she said in the same pretty, low voice: “Tell me what circumstances?” Julian laughed, and his laugh might well have been construed as a sign of extreme nervousness and agitation. “I think not!” he said. “I might make you angry.” “You would not make me angry!” They came to the end of the alley as she spoke; it opened out on a quaint little corner containing a fish-pond surrounded by a stone balustrade, the fountain in the middle sparkling and dancing in the gleam of the artificial moonlight which had been arranged here and there about the grounds to give the finishing touch to sundry “bits.” Into this moonlight Maud Pomeroy stepped, and stood leaning gracefully over the balustrade gazing down into the water, as she said in a voice just low and hesitating enough to be perfectly distinct: “Mr. Romayne, will you tell me--did you think me very angry when you came to-night?” “I hope you are not angry now, at least!” was the answer, spoken with eager anxiety. “But I would rather think you had been angry than believe that you were quite indifferent as to whether I came or not!” “I am not--indifferent!” Maud Pomeroy paused. There was no colour at all in her cheeks now, and her lips were drawn together in a hard, thin line such as no one had ever seen on her face before. There was a dead silence. A sudden stillness had come over Julian’s figure as he stood also leaning against the balustrade, but with his back to the water. His hand was clenched fiercely against the stone. “I have no right to be angry with you,” Maud Pomeroy went on; her voice was thin and hard as if its steadiness was the result of deliberate effort. “I have no rights at all. If I had----” She let her voice die away again with deliberate intention. The silence that followed had something ghastly in it. At last, with his face as white as death, and keeping his eyes fixed steadily before him, Julian moved. “You will catch cold, I’m afraid!” he said, a little hoarsely. “Shall we go in?” Without a single word Miss Pomeroy moved also and retraced her steps up the alley. For one moment, and for one moment only, her face was no longer that of a gentle and amiable girl, but of a spiteful and vindictive woman. CHAPTER IV