“Whereas, now, I’m made or marred by what a pale little devil with cat’s eyes chooses to answer me,” replied Raimond coarsely. “Well, there’s no choice! I’ll marry her if she says yes to my somewhat mature charms. If she says no, I fail to see what’s to be done next!” “Then,” said Egerton angrily, “you’ve less sense than I imagined. Why do you suppose I hired a yacht with money I haven’t got, and brought her and you to this God-forsaken hole? If she says no, she can live and die here. She’ll never get back to England, and she doesn’t know who she is in any case. I should fancy it was simple as A B C. We’ll lose the money, but we’ll save the rest.” Raimond Erle for a long minute said nothing. The wretched listener who shrank appalled behind the screen of cypress could not see that he was looking the other man up and down. “Well,” he remarked at last, “you must have been a daredevil when you were young! But I quite agree with you. There’s only one character in which your protégée can be taken to England, but you must give me a little time to play the game. Come on out of this,” with sudden distaste. “I don’t know why, but I feel as if there were devils behind every bush in your secluded retreat.” “There’s one; oh, there’s one!” said Andria Heathcote, who knew now that she had never been Andria Erle, though she had hoped against hope even when she was turned out on the world with ten pounds. “I’ll ruin you--ruin you! If there’s a God in heaven, you shall never have Beryl to torture as you tortured me!” A thousand slights, a thousand dreadful positions he had put her in where she must hold up her head till women called her brazen--aye, and men, too!--came back to her. One kindly word, one pitying regret for the woman he had once been mad for, and she might have played into his hands for no other reason than that he had spoken of her softly for old sake’s sake. But now--she could hate him now! Blindly, not seeing or caring where she was going, she stumbled forward on the rough path, and round the very next bush nearly fell against--Heriot! Pale, quivering from head to foot, she stood quite still. For a moment she could not speak for the ungovernable fury of rage in her that he should have heard her shamed. “You listened!” she cried at last. “You heard.” In the last low rays of the sinking sun he stood before her bareheaded. “I slipped out for some air,” he said, very low. “I stood here because I did not want them to see me till I knew what you had done. Yes, I heard.” If he had dared to pity her she would have stood like a stone, but now something in his voice reached the heart that felt frozen in her breast. She broke into such a dreadful sobbing as he had never heard. “I knew it before,” she cried; “though I wouldn’t believe it. Even when he turned me away, I wouldn’t believe it. I thought I was his wife. He shall never have Beryl--never, unless he kills me to get her!”