The girl retreated a few steps, a red glory on her features. A strange sweet shyness shone in her eyes. “I see!” exclaimed Rufus, in a passion of grief and jealousy. “You will marry Lord Towyn? Oh, Neva! Neva!” “Rufus, it cannot matter to you whom I marry since I cannot marry you. Let us be friends--brother and sister--” “I will be all to you or nothing!” ejaculated Rufus violently. “I will marry you or die!” He broke from the grasp she laid upon him, and with a wild cry upon his lips, dashed from the room. In the hall he encountered Craven Black and his bride, just come in from the garden. He would have brushed past them unseeing, unheeding, but his father, seeing his excitement and agitation, grasped his arm forcibly, arresting his progress. “What’s the matter?” demanded Craven Black fiercely. “What’s up?” “I’m going to kill myself!” returned Rufus shrilly, trying to break loose from that strong, unyielding clasp. “It’s all over. Neva has refused me, and turned me adrift. She is going to marry Lord Towyn!” “Oh, is she?” said Craven Black mockingly. “We’ll see about that.” “We will see!” said Neva’s step-mother, with a cruel and fierce compression of her lips. “I am Miss Wynde’s guardian. We will see if she dares disobey her father’s often repeated injunctions to obey me! If she does refuse, she shall feel my power!” “Defer your suicide until you see how the thing turns out, my son,” said Craven Black, with a little sneer. “Go to your room and dry your tears, before the servants laugh at you.” Rufus Black slunk away, miserable, yet with reviving hope. Perhaps the matter was not ended yet? Perhaps Neva would reconsider her decision? As he disappeared up the staircase, Mrs. Craven Black laid her hand on her bridegroom’s arm, and whispered: “The girl will prove restive. We shall have trouble with her. If we mean to force her into this marriage, we must first of all get her away from her friends. Where shall we take her? How shall we deal with her?” CHAPTER XXIV. LALLY FINDS A NEW HOME. Nearly six weeks had intervened between Rufus Black’s proposal of marriage to Neva Wynde on the road-side bank and his final rejection by her in the music-room at Hawkhurst. It will be remembered that there had been a hidden witness to the half-despairing, half-loving, proposal of Rufus, and that this hidden witness, seeing, but unseen, was no other than the wronged young wife whom Rufus Black mourned as dead, and whom in his soul he loved a thousand-fold better than the beautiful young heiress. During the six weeks that had passed, what had become of Lally--poor, heart-broken, despairing Lally? We have narrated how she staggered away in the night gloom, after seeing Rufus and Neva together in the square of light from the home windows upon the marble terrace, not knowing whither she went, but hurrying as swiftly as she might from her young husband, from happiness, and from hope itself.