“Mr. Lacour, please to leave me!” Ada suddenly exclaimed, rousing herself from a kind of heaviness which had held her inactive and irresponsive. Then she added: “I cannot aid you. We all have our lives to live; yours is no harder than mine. Try your best to be happy; I know nothing else to live for.” “Will--you--help me?” he asked, plainly enough at last. “It has come, you see, in spite of everything. Will you help me?” “I cannot. You mean, of course, will I promise to be your wife. I shall make that promise to no one till I am one-and-twenty.” It was a flash of illumination for Lacour. “Not even,” he inquired, with a smile of quiet humour, “when Mrs. Clarendon marries?” “When Mrs. Clarendon marries?” Ada repeated, not exactly with surprise, but questioningly. “You know that she is going to marry Lord Winterset, and very soon? Why, there is another terrible mistake; I ought not to have mentioned it if you do not know it. I thought it was understood.” “Perhaps it is,” returned Ada, a curious expression in her eyes. “It does not matter; it does not affect me. I beg you not to stay longer. Indeed, we have no more to say to each other.” “May I write to you from India?” “If you still have the slightest interest in me; I shall be glad to hear you have got there safely. I must leave you now.” He had retained her hand for the last few moments, and now she felt herself being softly drawn towards him. “My hand!” she exclaimed almost hysterically. “Release it! I order you to leave me!” She tore it away and fell back several paces; then, as he still remained motionless, she went to the door and opened it. Lacour turned away; it was to hide the smile which rose when he heard the lock. In another moment he was once more in the garden. There was moonlight by this time; the lawn was unshadowed, and he had to pass before the house in order to get into the park, and thence by a track he had in mind which would bring him into the high road. Close at hand, however, was the impenetrable gloom of the shrubbery, and, just as he was moving away from the end of the house to make a bold start across the open, there issued from the trees the form of a lady, who stepped quickly up to him. “Mr. Lacour,” she said, recognising him without difficulty, “will you have the goodness to explain this to me?” He had never yet heard Mrs. Clarendon’s voice speaking thus; it impressed him. “What is the meaning of your presence in my house, and your very unusual way of leaving it?” Vincent owed it to himself to make the most of this present experience. He was not likely again to see such an embodiment of splendid indignation, nor hear a voice so self-governed in rich anger. It was a pity that he had for the moment lost his calmer faculties; it cost him no little effort to speak the first few words of reply. “I can only ask you to forgive me, Mrs. Clarendon----” He was interrupted.