"Are you looking at that woman with the smile?" said Piers abruptly. She turned to him. "You are so like her, Piers. But I wouldn't like you to have a smile like that. There is something tragic behind it." "We are a tragic family," said Piers sombrely. "As for her, she ruined her own life and my grandfather's too. She might have been happy enough with him if she had tried." "Oh, Piers, I wonder!" Avery said, with a feeling that that smile revealed more to her than to him. "I say she might," Piers reiterated, with a touch of impatience. "He thought the world of her, just as--just as--" he smiled at her suddenly--"I do of you. He never knew that she wasn't satisfied until one fine day she left him. She married again--afterwards, and then died. He never got over it." But still Avery had a vagrant feeling of pity for the woman who had been Sir Beverley's bride. "I expect they never really understood each other," she said. Piers' dark eyes gleamed. "Do you know what I would have done if I had been in his place?" he said. "I would have gone after her and brought her back--even if I'd killed her afterwards." His voice vibrated on a deep note of savagery. He poured out a glass of wine with a hand that shook. Avery said nothing, but through the silence she was conscious of the hard throbbing of her heart. There was something implacable, something almost cruel, about Piers at that moment. She felt as if he had bruised her without knowing it. And then in his sudden, bewildering way he left his chair and came to her, stooped boyishly over her. "My darling, you're so awfully pale to-night. Have some wine--to please me!" She leaned her head back against his shoulder and closed her eyes. "I am a little tired, dear; but I don't want any wine. I shall be all right in the morning." He laid his cheek against her forehead. "I want you to drink a toast with me. Won't you?" "We won't drink to each other," she protested, faintly smiling. "It's too like drinking to ourselves." "That's the sweetest thing you've ever said to me," he declared. "But we won't toast ourselves. We'll drink to the future, Avery, and--" he lowered his voice--"and all it contains. What?" Her eyes opened quickly, but she did not move. "Why do you say that?" "What?" he said again very softly. She was silent. He reached a hand for his own glass. "Drink with me, sweetheart!" he said persuasively. She suffered him to put it to her lips and drank submissively. But in a moment she put up a restraining hand. "You finish it!" she said, and pushed it gently towards him. He took it and held it high. The light gleamed crimson in the wine; it glowed like liquid fire. A moment he held it so, then without a word he carried it to his lips and drained it. A second later there came the sound of splintering glass, and Avery, turning in her chair, discovered that he had flung it over his shoulder. She gazed at him in amazement astonished by his action. "Piers!"