“You see the others didn’t mean any harm. They were drunk, and it was a row. But Falloden wasn’t drunk—and he did mean—” “Oh, not to hurt you so?” cried Connie involuntarily. “No—but to humble and trample on me,” said the youth with vehemence, his pale cheeks flaming. “He knew quite well what he was about. I felt that when they came into my room. He is cruel—he has the temper of the torturer—in cold blood—” A shudder of rage went through him. His excitable Slav nature brought everything back to him—as ugly and as real as when it happened. “Oh, no—no!” said Constance, putting her hand over her eyes. Radowitz controlled himself at once. “I won’t say any more,” he said in a low voice, breathing deep—“I won’t say any more.” But a minute afterwards he looked up again, his brow contracting—“Only, for God’s sake, don’t marry him!” “Don’t be afraid,” said Constance. “I shall never marry him!” He looked at her piteously. “Only—if you care for him—what then? You are not to be unhappy!—you are to be the happiest person in the world. If you did care for him—I should have to see some good in him—and that would be awful. It is not because he did me an injury, you understand. The other two are my friends—they will be always my friends. But there is something in Falloden’s soul that I hate—that I would like to fight—till either he drops or I. It is the same sort of feeling I have towards those who have killed my country.” He lay frowning, his blue eyes sombrely fixed and strained. “But now”—he drew himself sharply together—“you must talk of something else, and I will be quite quiet. Tell me where you have been—what you have seen—the theatre—the opera—everything!” She did her best, seeing already the anxious face of the nurse in the window behind. And as she got up to go, she said, “I shall come again very soon. And when you go to Yorkshire, I shall see you perhaps every day.” He looked up in astonishment and delight, and she explained that at Scarfedale Manor, her aunts’ old house, she would be only two or three miles from the high moorland vicarage whither he was soon to be moved. “That will do more for me than doctors!” said Radowitz with decision. Yet almost before she had reached the window opening on the balcony, his pain, mental and physical, had clutched him again. He did not look up as she waved farewell; and Sorell hurried her away.