Almost unknowing how, he hurried to the town-hall, up the stairs, through the library, into the reading-room. Would she be there? Yes, she was there, in her usual place. He strode towards her. She was not even pretending to read or write. She was pale as ashes, and trembling, as he saw in his approach. ‘Miss Blisset!’ he almost whispered, as he went up to her, and bent over her, his face dark with suppressed indignation, his eyes aflame. If she too had not been moved out of all conventional calm, she must have started at the expression which flashed from his face upon hers. ‘Oh, Mr. Heywood, will you be so very good as to go home with me now, at once? I have been so frightened and--insulted.’ Her voice broke, though her eyes flashed. How proud a front soever she might have showed to her insulter, the reaction had set in: the remembrance was not to be borne unmoved. ‘I know you have,’ said he in a low emphatic voice; and a tremor shook him too as he looked at her and saw how beautiful she was. He had admired her as she sat in repose, but now every fibre of his nature bowed to her, and he felt a passionate desire to do something, anything, which should set him apart in her eyes from others. Yet after his first swift glance, he scarcely looked at her, and said very little. Words appeared weak and trivial--he could not express in them his detestation of the conduct of that other man, or how profoundly he reverenced her. ‘How was it?’ he asked, speaking composedly, but clenching his hands, and crushing together what he held in them. ‘It was that man,’ said she, in a low breathless voice, ‘that hideous man. I don’t know where he saw me. I think he must have followed me, but when I got to that little lane, he suddenly overtook me, and spoke to me. I could not turn back. It would have been much farther--and so lonely. I did not answer him; I went on very fast, but he detained me so long in that lane--he would not let me pass. I thought I should--bah! I thought, when we got into the town, that he would have left me, but he did not. He came to the very door of this place, and I dare not go out for fear he should be there yet. Oh, I am so glad to see you! I thought you were never coming.’ She had leaned her head upon her hand, or she must have seen the light that flashed suddenly into his eyes--not the light that had been there at first. He drew a long breath, but succeeded in not betraying for a second his emotion, as she turned, pale and quivering with excitement, and put her two little slender hands upon his, saying earnestly, ‘You have been very kind to me. What should I have done if you had not helped me?’ ‘It has been a pleasure to serve you,’ he said constrainedly. ‘Do you feel fit to walk home now?’ ‘Oh, quite!’ she answered, picking up her note-book; and they went away together. Myles walked with her to the gate of her uncle’s house, and said, as they paused there, ‘Of course you will never come again, Miss Blisset?’