For some minutes there was dead silence, not the happy silence of two friends so secure in their friendship that they need not talk--the old-time silence which they had both loved, but a constrained, uncomfortable taciturnity, a leaden, speechless pause, during which Bram watched with feverish eyes the little face as it bent over her work, and noted that the outline of her cheek had grown sharper. He tried to speak, to break the horrid silence which weighed upon them both. But he could not. It seemed to him that there was something different about this meeting from any they had ever had, that the air was heavy with impending disaster. He spoke suddenly at last in a husky voice. “Miss Claire, I want you to tell me something.” She looked up quickly, with anxiety in her eyes. But she said nothing. “I want you to tell me,” he went on, assuming a tone which was almost bullying in his excitement, “why Mr. Christian came to see you the day he was married?” To his horror she stood up, pushing back her chair, moving as if with no other object than to hide the frantic emotion she was seized with at these words. There passed over her face a look of anguish which he never forgot as she answered in a low, breathless voice. “Hush, I cannot tell you. You must not ask. You must never ask. And you must never speak about it again, never, never!” Bram leaned over the table, and looked straight into her eyes. In every line of her face he read the truth. “He asked you to--to go away with him!” he growled, hardly above his breath. “Hush!” cried she. “Hush! I don’t know how you know; I hope, oh, I pray that nobody else knows. I want to forget it! I will forget it! If I had to go through it again it would kill me!” And, dry-eyed, she fell into a violent fit of shuddering, and sank down in her chair with her head in her hands. “The scoundrel!” said Bram in a terrible whisper. And there came into his face that look, that fierce peep out of the primitive north country savage, which had startled Chris himself one memorable night. Claire saw it, and she grew white as the dead. “Bram,” cried she hoarsely, “don’t look like that; don’t speak like that. You frighten me!” But he looked at her with eyes which did not see. This fulfilment of his fears, of his doubts of Chris, was a shock she could not understand. There was a pause before he was able to speak. Then he repeated vaguely-- “Frightened you, Miss Claire! I didn’t mean to do that!” But the look on his face had not changed. Claire leaned across the table, touched his sleeve impatiently, timidly. “Bram,” said she in a shrill voice, sharpened by alarm, “you are to forget it too! Do you hear?” He turned upon her suddenly. “No,” said he, “you can’t make me do that!” “But I say you must, you shall. Oh, Bram, if you had been here, if you had heard him, you would have been sorry for him, you would have pitied him, as I did!”