"It is just because I am kind and gentle and merciful," she said, in her sweet, grave accents, "that I will not marry you, dear! I know I am right,--and you will think so too, in time. For the moment you imagine me to be much better and prettier than I am--and that there is no one like me!--poor Robin!--you are blind!--there are so many sweet and lovely girls, well born, with fathers and mothers to care for them--and you, with your good looks and kind ways, could marry any one of them--and you will, some day! Good-night, dear! You have stayed here a long time talking to me!--just suppose you were seen sitting on this window-ledge so late!--it is past midnight!--what would be said of me!" "What could be said?" demanded Robin, defiantly. "I came up here of my own accord,--the blame would be mine!" She shook her head sadly, smiling a little. "Ah, Robin! The man is never blamed! It's always the woman's fault!" "Where's your fault to-night?" he asked. "Oh, most plain!" she answered. "When I saw you coming, I ought to have shut the window, drawn the curtains, and left you to clamber down the wall again as fast as you clambered up! But I wanted to tell you what had happened--and how everything had changed for me--and now--now that you know all--good-night!" He looked at her longingly. If she would only show some little sign of tenderness!--if he might just kiss her hand, he thought! But she withdrew into the shadow, and he had no excuse for lingering. "Good-night!" he said, softly. "Good-night, my angel Innocent! Good-night, my little love!" She made no response and moved slowly backward into the room. But as he reluctantly left his point of vantage and began to descend, stepping lightly from branch to branch of the accommodating wistaria, he saw the shadowy outline of her figure once more as she stretched out a hand and closed the lattice window, drawing a curtain across it. With the drawing of that curtain the beauty of the summer night was over for him, and poising himself lightly on a tough stem which was twisted strongly enough to give him adequate support and which projected some four feet above the smooth grass below, he sprang down. Scarcely had he touched the ground when a man, leaping suddenly out of a thick clump of bushes near that side of the house, caught him in a savage grip and shook him with all the fury of an enraged mastiff shaking a rat. Taken thus unawares, and rendered almost breathless by the swiftness of the attack, Clifford struggled in the grasp of his assailant and fought with him desperately for a moment without any idea of his identity,--then as by a dexterous twist of body he managed to partially extricate himself, he looked up and saw the face of Ned Landon, livid and convulsed with passion. "Landon!" he gasped--"What's the matter with you? Are you mad?" "Yes!" answered Landon, hoarsely--"And enough to make me so! You devil! You've ruined the girl!"