"I--I am not very well, dear. You have been so dull, it has upset me. I wish you would stay in with me this evening; I feel so nervous and lonely." "Yes, I will," he said; "but I must go there first." "No, no, dear; don't, please, don't go," she pleaded, as she caught his arm. "Please stay. She is not in the least ill, and I want you to stop. There, I'll make some tea directly, and we'll sit over it and have a long cosy chat, and it will do us both good, dear." "Jenny," he cried harshly, "you want to keep me at home." "Yes, dear, I told you so; but don't speak in that harsh way; you frighten me." "I'm not blind," he cried. "Don't deny it. You've heard from that old woman what I have just found out. He has come back." "Pierce!" she cried; and she shrank away from him, and covered her face with her hands. "Yes," he said wildly, and there was a look in his ghastly face which she had never seen before. "I knew it; and you are afraid that I shall meet him and wring his miserable neck." "Oh, Pierce, Pierce," she cried piteously, as she threw herself at his feet; "don't, don't, pray don't talk in this mad way." "Why not?" he said, with a mocking laugh. "It is consistent. There, get up; don't kneel there praying to a madman." She sprang up quickly and seized him by the shoulder, and then threw herself across his knees and her arms about his neck. "It is not true," she cried passionately. "You are not mad; you are only horribly angry, and I am frightened to death for fear that you should meet and be violent." "Violent! I could kill him!" he muttered, with a hard look in his eyes. "Good God, what a profanation! He marry her! She must have been mad, or there has been some cruel act of violence. Jenny, girl, I will see him and take him by the throat and make him tell me all. I have fought against it. I have told myself that she is unworthy of a second thought, but my heart tells me that it is not so. There has been some horrible trick played upon her; she would not--as you have said--she could not have gone off of her own will with that miserable little hound." "Yes, yes, that is what I think," she said, hysterically. "So wait patiently, dear, and we shall know the truth some day." "Wait!" he cried, with a mocking laugh. "Wait! With my brain feeling as if it were on fire. No, I have waited too long; I ought to have gone off after him at once, and learned the truth." "No, no, dear; you two must not meet. Now then, listen to me." "Some day, little bird," he said, lifting her from his knee, as he rose; then kissing her tenderly he extricated himself from her clinging hands as gently as he could, and rushed out. "O, Pierce, Pierce!" she cried. "Stay, stay!" But the only answer to her call as she ran to the door was the heavy beat of his feet in the gloom of the misty evening.