Cristiane had signed her own death-warrant. She was no longer innocent, but dangerous and in the way. To-night she should be no longer one nor the other. He looked at her with that frank gaze that always cloaked his worst deceits. “When a man dare not ask for what he wants, because it is so far above him, do you blame him for taking--what he can get?” His voice, full of hopeless longing, made the blood of triumph spring to her cheeks. Here again she would defeat Ismay! “Yes,” she said, her eyes on the table-cloth. “You could have--tried! You need not have kissed her,” pettishly, “before my very eyes.” “Cristiane!” he was on his feet at her side, his voice thrilling with simulated joy and passion; “you’re angry because I kissed her? You care?” She did not care, beyond her vanity that was piqued, but she was afraid to say so. Somehow the man dominated her till she sat an arrant coward. She trembled before his eyes, that were full of a passion that she thought was love; she had no intuition to tell her that it was hatred and the threat of death. “I--I don’t know!” she stammered. “You shall know!” he retorted, knowing better than to plead with her. His hand, softly brutal, was under her chin. “Kiss me,” he ordered. “Tell me you love me.” Like a frightened child, she repeated the words, and he knew she lied as she spoke. He was right, she was dangerous; weak, obstinate, self-willed, with an utterly unbridled tongue. “Kiss me,” he repeated, longing to choke her instead, and having nothing but distaste for her peachlike cheek, her parted lips. He was relieved that she sprang away from him--and she never dreamed that he let her go. From the door she looked back provokingly. “Not now--perhaps to-night!” and she went off singing. Mrs. Trelane heard her, as, having been in a hurry despite her hasty retreat, she stood leisurely at Ismay’s door. Her shrewd ears caught the excited note in the girl’s voice. “He’s been making love to her,” she thought astutely. “Marcus making love at this hour in the morning! Can he mean to go that way for his money, after all?” She knocked, this time with earnestness, at Ismay’s locked door. It opened on the instant. Ismay, dressed as usual, stood inside, her eyes a little heavy, her face unnaturally flushed. She had got back by the early train, driving from the station to the gate in a fly, moneyless no longer, thanks to Davids; by eight o’clock had gained her room, unseen by any one, since the servants were at breakfast, and the rest of the house waiting till half-past eight should bring their tea and hot water. As the girl bathed and dressed herself it almost seemed to her that it was a dream, that she could never have been in London and got back again in those few hours while the house slept. Only the instructions she had from Davids told her it was no dream, but reality. At the sight of her mother, for the first time in all her life she flung her arms round her and kissed her.