"And, dear, they are not the only things between us--dividing me from you. A love I felt--a great love I thought never to feel again--in the past--" He looked away from her, over her head into the years that were gone. Then his eyes came back to the eyes that were lifted to him, and he grasped her hands tighter against his breast. "There was Reggie, too," he said. "Poor Reggie! But I made what reparation I could. I gave him his chance. Did he ever have a chance, Deleah?" She shook her head. "Never!" "What will he say to us?" There came a rap upon the door, and Sir Francis dropped the hands he held, and started back. "I am particularly engaged, Rogers," he said. The door was discreetly opened to admit not Rogers, but Rogers's voice: "I beg your pardon, sir, but there is a matter of some importance; if you could come for a few minutes." "I have told you I am engaged," the voice of authority protested. With a kind of discreet reluctance the door closed again, and Sir Francis, with the impatience of a lover whose ardour has received a momentary check, took the girl into his arms. With a hand pushed against his chest she held herself away from him. "Why?" he asked her. "You are not afraid of me, Deleah?" "Yes. Very much afraid." "Tell me why, my dearest child?" "Oh, you know," said Deleah, turning away her head. "No! It is I who should be afraid of you; you, with your youth and beauty, and sweet and gentle goodness. I confess it--all those months you lived in my house, I was afraid." "You said there were things between us--dividing us. You did not say what really is there. What papa did--" As she faltered over the words there came a louder knocking upon the door, which opened almost at the same minute. Mr. Rogers's deprecating face appeared there, and behind it the face of a policeman. "A minute, sir. I won't detain you a minute," the clerk said; and Sir Francis walked to the door with an impatient step and closed it behind him. Deleah, left to herself--was it for an hour? was it for a minute?--looked with eyes dazed with happiness upon the hands that had been crushed in his. "I used to think that to be loved by him would be heaven," she said. "And now--now I feel nothing. I am numb." He came back very grave, his face unusually pale. "Your cab is waiting. I will take you home, my dear child," he said. She crossed the big yard again at his side. The drayman was still at his horses' heads, the groom was taking the riding-horse round to the stables. On the opposite side of the yard beneath one of the arches of a heavy colonnade, a couple of policemen stood. One of them was making notes in a book. A group of workpeople stood near by; and Deleah remembered afterwards that there was about them and the rest an air of suspending something they were saying or doing while their chief and the girl at his side walked to the great entrance gates.