--Little restless proud creature! What a riddle she has been to him all the time--flitting about the house so pale and inaccessible, so silent, too, in general, since that night when he had wrestled with her in the drawing-room. One moment of fresh battle between them there has been--in the park--on the subject of old Scarsbrook. Preposterous!--that she should think for one moment she could be allowed to confess herself--and so bring all the low talk of the neighbourhood about her ears. He could hear the old man's plaintive cogitations over the strange experience which had blanched his hair and beard and brought him a visible step nearer to his end. "Soombody towd my owd woman tudther day, Misther Helbeck, at yoong Mason o' t' Browhead had been i' th' park that neet. Mappen tha'll tell me it was soom gell body he'd been coortin. Noa!--he doan't gaa about wi' the likes o' thattens! Theer was never a soun' ov her feet, Misther Helbeck! She gaed ower t' grass like a bit cloud i' summer, an she wor sma' an nesh as a wagtail on t' steëans. I ha seen aw maks o' gells, but this one bet 'em aw." And after that, to think of her pouring herself out in impetuous explanation to the old peasant and his wife! It had needed a strong will to stop her. "Mr. Helbeck, I wish to tell the truth, and I ought to tell it! And your arguments have no weight with me whatever." But he had made them prevail. And she had not punished him too severely. A little more pallor, a little more silence for a time--that was all! A score of poignant recollections laid hold upon him as he paced the night away. That music in the summer dusk--the softness of her little face--the friendliness--first, incredible friendliness!--of her lingering hand. Next morning he had banished himself to Paris, on a Catholic mission devised for the purpose. He had gone, torn with passion--gone, in the spirit that drives the mystic through all the forms of self-torture that religious history records--_ad majorem Dei gloriam_. He had returned to find her frozen and hostile as before--all wilfulness with Augustina--all contradiction with himself. The Froswick plan was already on foot--and he had furthered it--out of a piteous wish to propitiate her, to make her happy. What harm could happen to her? The sister would go with her and bring her back. Why must he always play the disobliging and tyrannical host? Could he undo the blood-relationship between her and the Masons? If for mere difficulty and opposition's sake there were really any fancy in her mind for this vulgar lad, perhaps after all it were the best thing to let her see enough of him for disenchantment! There are instincts that can be trusted. Such had been the thoughts of the morning. They do not help him through these night hours, when, in spite of all the arguments of common sense, he recurs again and again to the image of her as alone, possibly defenceless, in Mason's company.