It had touched her. She looks like a living thing stricken suddenly into marble, as she stands gazing back at him, with her hands tightly clenched before her. India! To India! And she had never heard. Extreme anger, however, fights with her grief, and, overcoming it, enables her to answer her adversary. "I think you, too, will feel regret," says she, gravely, "when you look back upon your conduct to me to-day." There is such gentleness, such dignity, in her rebuke, and her beautiful face is so full of a mute reproach, that all the good there is in Beauclerk rises to the surface. He flings his hat upon a table near, and himself at her feet. "Forgive me!" cries he, in a stifled tone. "Have mercy on me, Joyce!--I love you--I swear it! Do not cast me adrift! All I have said or done I regret now! You said I should regret, and I do." Something in his abasement disgusts the girl, instead of creating pity in her breast. She shakes herself free of him by a sharp and horrified movement. "You must go home," she says calmly, yet with a frowning brow, "and you must not come here again. I told, you it was all useless, but you would not listen. No, no; not a word!" He has risen to his feet, and would have advanced toward her, but she waves him from her with a sort of troubled hatred in her face. "You mean----" begins he, hoarsely. "One thing--one thing only," feverishly--"that I hope I shall never see you again!" CHAPTER XLVIII. "When a man hath once forfeited the reputation of his sincerity he is set fast, and nothing will then serve his turn, neither truth nor falsehood." When he is gone Joyce draws a deep breath. For a moment it seems to her that it is all over--a disagreeable task performed, and then suddenly a reaction sets in. The scene gone through has tried her more than she knows, and without warning now she finds she is crying bitterly. How horrible it all had been. How detestable he had looked--not so much when offering her his hand (as for his heart--pah!) as when he had given way to his weak exhibition of feeling and had knelt at her feet, throwing himself on her mercy. She placed her hands over her eyes when she thought of that. Oh! she wished he hadn't done it! She is still crying softly--not now for Beauclerk's behavior, but for certain past beliefs--when a knock at the door warns her that another visitor is coming. She has not had time or sufficient presence of mind to tell a servant that she is not at home, when Miss Maliphant is ushered in by the parlor maid. "I thought I'd come down and have a chat with you about last night," she begins in her usual loud tones, and with an assumption of easiness that is belied by the keen and searching glance she directs at Joyce. "I'm so glad," says Joyce, telling her little lie as bravely as she can, while trying to conceal her red eyelids from Miss Maliphant's astute gaze by pretending to rearrange a cushion that has fallen from one of the lounges.