“Oh,” cried Beryl, with a sob of shame, “he won’t come! He’ll never come any more, nor his cats, either. Don’t speak to me, don’t ask me why, Andria knows,” she was crying bitterly, “that all queer animals and things come to me. And I met him to-night, and I did scream, though I told you a lie! He was so old--and so pitiful--I couldn’t let you hurt him. But he was there all the time I said he was gone.” “Darling!” said Heriot softly. “Little brave darling, don’t cry.” He put his arm round the bowed shoulders as gently as a woman, and with as self-forgetful a tenderness. He knew no other girl would have pitied a man who filled her with terror, who had bitten like a beast before her eyes only last night. “Don’t cry!” he repeated. “And why do you mind that animals trust you and miserable things come to you? I loved you for it the very first day I saw you.” “Mother Felicitas said I wasn’t human! I was half a beast,” she sobbed. “And it makes me afraid of--who I am.” “Beryl, look at me,” said the man softly. She stopped crying; just in time, if she had known it, to keep her sobs from jealous ears close by. “Do you know,” Heriot said, “why things like that trust you? Because you love them and have no fear of them. I would give half my life to have dumb animals come to me as they do to you. Don’t you know that no wild thing will come to any one who isn’t so good that they know it?” “No!” she whispered. He nodded gravely. “There is something else just as true,” he said very low. “I love you, too,” he stooped his handsome head and kissed her hands. At the light touch of his lips she shivered. “Don’t be afraid,” he whispered. For his life he could not speak above his breath. “You can’t!” she cried. “No one does but Andria.” “Look at me,” he repeated more gently than ever, and as she raised her eyes the sweetness and truth in his overmastered her. “Tell me, can’t you love me--only a little?” “I don’t know;” but she had loved him madly, jealously, since the very day he came. “I don’t know.” “I think you do.” He had seen her eyes. “Beryl!” She clung to him suddenly. “They would murder you! Salome said so. Oh! take me away from this place--from Mr. Egerton.” “I’ll try!” said Heriot soberly. And suddenly the task before him flashed out in its true colors. He realized that unless he could be outwitted Erceldonne would kill the girl before he let her get away. “You can do it if you want to!” Somehow she was disappointed, taken aback. The slow words that were so much better than a rash promise had chilled her almost to distrust. Before he could answer she had broken away from him and was scudding across the grass to the house. CHAPTER XXV. THE LAUGH IN THE DARK. A weakness like the lethargy that comes before death had bound Andria hand and foot. Where she had sunk down on the door-step she stayed, caring nothing for the dark shadows of the garden, or the beasts, and worse, that might be hidden in them.