"And yet I must urge them," he said, "for I have to urge them as an excuse for the liberty--the unpardonable liberty as you at present deem it--which I have taken." "It is unpardonable!" she echoed, with suppressed passion. "There is no excuse--absolutely none." "And yet," he said, still quietly and insistently, "if my devotion were less ardent, my attachment less sincere and immovable, I should have allowed you to go on your way to ruin and disaster." Stella started and looked at him indignantly. He moved his hand, slightly deprecatory of her wrath. "I will not conceal from you that I knew of your destination, of your appointment." "You acted the spy!" she articulated. "I acted rather the guardian!" he said. "What kind of love, how poor and inactive that would be, which could remain quiescent while the future of its object was at stake!" Stella put up her hand to silence him. "I do not care--I will not listen to your fine phrases. They do not move me, Mr. Adelstone. To your devotion and--and attachment I am indifferent; I refuse to accept them. I await your explanations. If you have none to give, I will go," and she made a movement as if to depart. "Wait, I implore, I _advise_ you." Stella stopped. "Hear me to the end," he said. "You will not permit me to allude to the passionate love which is my excuse and my warranty for what I have done. So be it. I will speak of it no more, if I can so control myself as to refrain from doing so. I will speak of yourself and--and of the man who plots your ruin." Stella opened her lips, but refrained from speech, and merely smiled a smile of pitiless scorn. "I speak of Lord Leycester Wyndward," said Jasper Adelstone, the name leaving his lips as if every word tortured them. "It is true, is it not, that this Lord Leycester has asked you to meet him at a place in London--at Bruton Street, his lodgings? It is true that he has told you that he was prepared to make you his wife!" "And you will say that it is a lie, and ask me to believe you--_you_ against _him_!" she broke in, with a laugh that cut him like a whip. "No," he said; "I will admit that it may be true--I think that it is possible that it may be true; and yet, you see, I have braved your wrath and, far worse, your scorn, and balked him." "For a time," she said, almost beneath her breath--"for a time, a short time. I fear, Mr. Adelstone, that he will demand reparation, heavy reparation at your hands for such 'balking.'" To save her life she could not have suppressed her threat. "I do not fear Lord Leycester, or any man," he said. "Where you are concerned I fear only--yourself." "Do you intend giving me the explanation, sir?" she demanded, impetuously. "I have stepped in between him and his prey," he went on, still gravely, "because I thought, I hoped, that were time given you, though it were at the last moment, that you would see the danger which lay before you, and draw back."