“Come in, then.” She had caught her breath curiously. She led the way, not into the house itself, but up by an outside stair to the veranda that opened off Andria’s bedroom. From it she could see the faintest signal from the hillside down which Heriot must come, if he came in time; would be within call of Andria, sleeping like the dead behind her closed shutters. Erle looked at her. She had a crushed hibiscus blossom in her hand that was not so crimson as her mouth. He would get her by fair means or foul, if it were only for that and her tawny eyes. “So you’re anxious to get away?” he said slowly, but she hesitated instead of assenting. “I don’t see why I was brought here at all!” she returned at last, frowning. He smiled. “Don’t you? I do. Look at me, don’t you remember me?” “Look at me!”--with what different eyes another man had said those very words! “Remember you!” she retorted. “No; how could I?” But she shivered. The man was lying, as Andria had warned her he would lie. “Think!” he said. “Have you forgotten one evening at Blackpool station? And a frightened girl who stood there without anywhere to go? Because I remember, if you don’t.” But like a flash it had come back to her. His white duck clothes made him look different, but it was the same face she had seen. And she remembered there had been no pity in the man’s eyes as he watched her. “You do remember!” he said. “Well, don’t be angry if I tell you something. I went away and you haunted me. I couldn’t forget you. When I heard of the girl found starving in the wreck I knew it was you. I sent my father to get you from--the woman”--with a momentary hesitation, since he had never known exactly about that part of the business and dared not invent--“who had adopted you. It was I who suggested bringing you here,” he continued calmly lying. “I knew convent arms are long and you weren’t safe in England. But if you want to go back you can, though it’s a living grave, a convent, for a beautiful girl,” he spoke dreamily, and so impersonally that yesterday she would not have noticed the flattery. “Why did you care?” abruptly. “I was nothing to you.” “I wanted to help you live your life,” he said, with a queer shrug. “That was all. Oh! you are a child still. You’ve seen nothing. Not diamonds, nor satin gowns, nor balls where the music gets into your blood and you know half the men in the room are mad about you.” “To that life?” said Beryl slowly, for Brian Heriot had told her none of these things. Yet she searched the empty hillside once more with her eyes. “That, and more. I don’t know why I cared you should be saved from the convent, but I did. You can go back, as I said, if you like.”