“It is not such a very long story,” she said, “and the only part of it that has any interest began on that day when we met. I suppose they have told you that I am nobody, and worse than nobody. I do not know who my father was, though I think”—and she smiled as though some coincidence had struck her—“that he was a gentleman whom my mother fell in love with. Mr. Levinger has to do with me in some way; I believe that he paid for my education when I went to school, but I am not sure even about this, and why he should have done so I can’t tell. Mr. Samuel Rock is a dissenter and a farmer; they say that he is the richest man in Bradmouth. I don’t know why it was no fault of mine, for I always disliked him very much but he took a fancy to me years ago, although he said nothing about it at the time. After I came back from school my aunt urged me continually to accept his attentions, but I kept out of his way until that afternoon when I met you. Then he found me sitting under the tower at Ramborough Abbey, where I had gone to be alone because I was cross and worried; and he proposed to me, and was so strange and violent in his manner that he frightened me. What I was most afraid of, however, was that he would tell my aunt that I had refused him for I did refuse him and that she would make my life more of a misery to me than it is already, for you see I have no friends here, where everybody looks down upon me, and nothing to do. So in the end I struck a bargain with him, that he should leave me alone for six months, and that then I would give him a final answer, provided that he promised to say nothing of what had happened to my aunt. He has not kept his promise, for to-day he waylaid me and was very insolent and brutal, so much so that at last he caught hold of me and kissed me against my will, tearing my dress half off me, and I pushed him away and told him what I thought of him. The end of it was that he swore that he would marry me yet, and left me. Then I came back home, and an hour ago I told my aunt what had happened, and there was a scene. She said that either I should marry Samuel Rock or be turned out of the house in a day or two, so I suppose that I must go. And that is all my story.” “The brute!” muttered Henry. “I wish I had him on board a man-of-war: I’d teach him manners. And what are you going to do, Joan?” “I don’t know. Work if I can, and starve if I can’t. It doesn’t matter; nobody will miss me, or care what happens to me.” “Don’t say that, Joan,” he answered huskily; “I—I care, for one.” “It is very good of you to say so, but you see you have others to care for besides me. There is Miss Levinger, for instance.” “I have told you once already that I am not engaged to Miss Levinger.”