Did Kate suspect? She glanced anyhow, in a startled, puzzled way, at the dim face menacing her, before she turned on her heel, and, with her head held erect, swept away. She made for the narrow track, leaving the other standing where she was, and had passed but half-way down it, when she met Hamilton face to face. The scarf in his hat was plainly distinguishable; she took him for her husband, and stood rigidly aside to let him pass. “Ah, little wicked truant!” said he; “but I have run you to earth at last. What made you scamper from the great musician in that panic fashion?” His voice insensibly perplexed her; but her emotions were in too prejudiced a state to serve her for trusty interpreters. “Are _you_, then, the great musician?” she said, hard scorn in her tone, “since it was you alone I sought to escape from, and--and for ever.” “From me?”--a grieved amazement marked his voice--“after what hath passed between us?” She stood back, peremptorily signing him on with her hand. “Passed? Are you again in error? Proceed, sir--’tis but a little distance--and find her, the brazen partner of your guilt, for whom you have already once mistaken me.” He cried out: “You are mad! How could I ever mistake you? Were we not listening together but now to the harpist, when you turned and ran?” “_I_ ran? I have heard no harpist. It was from your lying importunities I escaped.” “My lying--before God I spoke my very heart. And you were kind, cousin.” “Cousin!” “Am I not your cousin, though your lover?” “George Hamilton!” “Do you not know me, cousin?” She sighed, seemed to sway a little, then to stiffen. “O!” she said. “I know you now, indeed.” He laughed, relieved. “Why, what misled you, Kate?” “Never mind.” She was a serpent all at once, subtle, wooing, alluring. “Let us go back this way. There is something I want to show you. Will you come?” Come? He would have followed her to the pit. Yet what surprise had she in store for him, what unknown witness to her own mistake, what solution of this mystery of her denial about the music? She had appeared strangely affected by that performance; was it possible it had wrought upon her to forgetfulness? Well, he would know in a moment. She meant that he should--meant to face him with the proof of his own misconception and his intended betrayal of herself. It was somehow that woman wretch’s doing, of that she felt certain, though she was bewildered with the complication of it all. But at least her course here was clear: it was to expose and denounce the would-be seducer in the presence of the wanton who had entrapped him.