“And the will!” Miles Cylmer murmured sarcastically, knowing she was safe in her magnanimity, her self-forgetfulness, since no court in England would doubt that clear will. “Then I will stay.” With a little sigh, as if she had been seeking the right path, and at last found it, Mrs. Trelane moved nearer to Cristiane; not very near, for somehow Ismay stood between them, her eyes, that only her mother could see, blazing green with warning. She lowered them as her mother stood back, and was no longer between her mother and the two men, and so did not see Mrs. Trelane for the first time look full at Miles Cylmer. She had reason, since last evening, to hate him, yet it was not her dislike that made him grow so pale. The merciless triumph in her hard blue eyes, whence a veil seemed to have been lifted, the cold derision which said plainly, “Where are your threats now?” troubled him more than the undying enmity that he saw on her face. What would come to Cristiane in the hands of a woman like this, who could act gentleness and magnanimity at one minute, and the next show the true colors of an adventuress who has outwitted her enemy? Would she use her power to forbid him the house? Very likely, after last night’s mad attempt to stay the tide of fate with a straw! “She will have her work cut out to do it,” he reflected, the muscles round his mouth very set and grim. He moved quickly toward Cristiane. “You will let me come and see you sometimes,” he said very low, “even now that you have new friends?” For he was sore and smarting that the girl who knew he loved her, who had known him all her life, had never even given him a look since she entered the room. She looked at him now indifferently. “If you care to come over, please do”--her voice quite cold and level. “You will let me do anything I can for you--you know I am always at your service.” Cristiane’s lip curled, ever so faintly. If he were always at her service, why had he never come, never written, when the dreadful news was known? The new friends that he grudged her were more faithful than the old, very surely! When she had wanted comfort it was not Miles Cylmer who had given it. “I don’t think I want anything now,” she said proudly, never dreaming of how he had tried to do his best for her. “But, of course, come when you please.” She went quietly forward to speak to Mr. Bolton, and for a moment Cylmer stood silent, sick at heart, though he had made his point, and the door of Marchant’s Hold was not shut to him. Ismay’s eyes were deep and green as she watched his face; he had made a point for her, too. “He will come to see Cristiane,” she thought triumphantly; “he shall stay to see me!” She had no longer any fear lest her mother should be connected in his mind with that missing photograph. She was too different in her decorous black from the white-gowned, bare-armed woman of the picture.