"Oh, my love, my love!" she murmured, stretching out her hands as she had done that night in the garden, "come back to me! I cannot let you go! I cannot do it! I cannot!" Nerved by the intensity of her grief she sprang to her feet, and swiftly descended the cliff. Near the bottom there were two paths, one leading to the village, the other to the open country beyond. Instinctively she took the one leading to the village, and so missed Leycester, for he had gone down the other. Had she but made a different choice, had she turned to the right instead of the left, how much would have been averted; but she sped, almost breathlessly to the left, and instead of Leycester found Jasper waiting for her. With a low cry she stopped short. "Where is he?" she asked, almost unconsciously. "Let me go to him!" Jasper stared at her, then he grasped her arm. "You have seen him!" he said, not roughly, not fiercely, but with a suppressed fury. There was a rough seat cut out of the stone beside her, and she sank into it, shrinking away from his eager watching in quest of that other. "You have seen him!" he repeated, hoarsely. "Do not deny it!" The insult conveyed in the words recalled her to herself. "Yes!" she said, meeting his gaze steadily; "I have seen him. Why should I deny it?" "No," he said; "and you will not deny that you were running after him when I--I stopped you. You will admit that, I suppose?" "Yes," she answered, with a deadly calm, "I was following him." He dropped her arm which he had held, and pressed his hand to his heart to still the pang of its throbbing. "You--you are shameless!" he said at last, hoarsely. She did not speak. "Do you realize what to-night is?" he said, glaring down at her. "This is our marriage eve; do you hear--our marriage eve?" She shuddered, and put up her hands to her face. "Did you plan this meeting?" he demanded, with a fierce sneer. "You will admit that, I suppose? It is only a mere chance that I did not find you in his arms; is that so? Curse him! I wish I had killed him when I met him just now!" Then the old spirit roused itself in her bosom, and she looked up at him with a scornful smile on her beautiful, wasting face. "You!" she said. That was all, but it seemed to drive him mad. For a moment he stood breathless and panting. The sight of his fury and suffering--for the suffering was palpable--smote her. Her mood changed suddenly; with a cry she caught his arm.