“I will swear never to fight again; and you needn’t swear anything. If that is not an easy bargain, I don’t know what is.” “Easy for me, yes. But for you?” “Never mind me. You do whatever you like; and I’ll do whatever you like. You have a conscience; so I know that whatever you like will be the best thing. I have the most science; but you have the most sense. Come!” Lydia looked around, as if for a means of escape. Cashel waited anxiously. There was a long pause. “It can’t be,” he said, pathetically, “that you are afraid of me because I was a prize-fighter.” “Afraid of you! No: I am afraid of myself; afraid of the future; afraid FOR you. But my mind is already made up on this subject. When I brought about this meeting between you and your mother I determined to marry you if you asked me again.” She stood up, quietly, and waited. The rough hardihood of the ring fell from him like a garment: he blushed deeply, and did not know what to do. Nor did she; but without willing it she came a step closer to him, and turned up her face towards his. He, nearly blind with confusion, put his arms about her and kissed her. Suddenly she broke loose from his arms, seized the lapels of his coat tightly in her hands, and leaned back until she nearly hung from him with all her weight. “Cashel,” she said, “we are the silliest lovers in the world, I believe--we know nothing about it. Are you really fond of me?” She recovered herself immediately, and made no further demonstration of the kind. He remained shy, and was so evidently anxious to go, that she presently asked him to leave her for a while, though she was surprised to feel a faint pang of disappointment when he consented. On leaving the house he hurried to the address which his mother had given him: a prodigious building in Westminster, divided into residential flats, to the seventh floor of which he ascended in a lift. As he stepped from it he saw Lucian Webber walking away from him along a corridor. Obeying a sudden impulse, he followed, and overtook him just as he was entering a room. Lucian, finding that some one was resisting his attempt to close the door, looked out, recognized Cashel, turned white, and hastily retreated into the apartment, where, getting behind a writing-table, he snatched a revolver from a drawer. Cashel recoiled, amazed and frightened, with his right arm up as if to ward off a blow. “Hullo!” he cried. “Drop that d--d thing, will you? If you don’t, I’ll shout for help.” “If you approach me I will fire,” said Lucian, excitedly. “I will teach you that your obsolete brutality is powerless against the weapons science has put into the hands of civilized men. Leave my apartments. I am not afraid of you; but I do not choose to be disturbed by your presence.” “Confound your cheek,” said Cashel, indignantly; “is that the way you receive a man who comes to make a friendly call on you?” “Friendly NOW, doubtless, when you see that I am well protected.”