“Ah, you don't know how he is changed. He looks on me as a mad dog. Consider, Zoe: do, pray, take the real key to it all. He is in love with Mademoiselle Klosking, madly in love with her: and I have been so unfortunate as to injure her--nearly to kill her. I dare say he thinks it is on your account he hates me; but men deceive themselves. It is for _her_ he hates me.” “Oh!” “Ay. Think for a moment, and you will see it is. _You_ are not in his confidence. I am sure he has never told _you_ that he ordered his keepers to shoot me down if I came about the house at night.” “Oh no, no!” cried Zoe. “Do you know he has raised the country against me, and has warrants out against me for forgery, because I was taken in by a rogue who gave me bills with sham names on them, and I got Vizard to cash them? As soon as we found out how I had been tricked, my uncle and I offered at once to pay him back his money. But no! he prefers to keep the bills as a weapon.” Zoe began to be puzzled a little. But she said, “You have been a long time discovering all these grievances. Why have you held no communication all this time?” “Because you were inaccessible. Does not your own heart tell you that I have been all these weeks trying to communicate, and unable? Why, I came three times under your window at night, and you never, never would look out.” “I did look out ever so often.” “If I had been you, I should have looked ten thousand times. I only left off coming when I heard the keepers were ordered to shoot me down. Not that I should have cared much, for I am desperate. But I had just sense enough left to see that, if my dead body had been brought bleeding into your hall some night, none of you would ever have been happy again. Your eyes would have been opened, all of you. Well, Zoe, you left Vizard Court; that I learned: but it was only this morning I could find out where you were gone: and you see I am here--with a price upon my head. Please read Vizard's advertisements.” She took them and read them. A hot flush mounted to her cheek. “You see,” said he, “I am to be imprisoned if I set my foot in Barfordshire. Well, it will be false imprisonment, and Mademoiselle Klosking's lover will smart for it. At all events, I shall take no orders but from you. You have been deceived by appearances. I shall do all I can to undeceive you, and if I cannot, there will be no need to imprison me for a deceit of which I was the victim, nor to shoot me like a dog for loving _you._ I will take my broken heart quietly away, and leave Barfordshire, and England, and the world, for aught I care.” Then he cried: and that made her cry directly. “Ah!” she sighed, “we are unfortunate. Appearances are so deceitful. I see I have judged too hastily, and listened too little to my own heart, that always made excuses. But it is too late now.” “Why too late?” “It is.” “But why?”