“No! no!” cried the lad, clinging to her, “you shall not leave us! Mr. Pennell shall not take you away! I will kill him first!” He was getting terribly jealous of Anthony Pennell, but Harriet laughed at his complaints and reproaches as the emanations of a love-sick schoolboy. She was flattered by his feverish longing for her society, and his outspoken admiration of her beauty, but she did not suppose for one moment that Bobby was capable of a lasting, or dangerous, sentiment. Mr. Pennell had become a familiar figure at the Red House by this time. His first visit had been speedily succeeded by another, at which he had presented Harriet Brandt with the copy of his book--an attention, which had he known it, flattered her vanity more than any praises of her beauty could have done. A plain woman likes to be told that she is good-looking, a handsome one that she is clever. Harriet Brandt was not unintelligent, on the contrary she had inherited a very fair amount of brains from her scientific father--but no one ever seemed to have found it out, until Anthony Pennell came her way. She was a little tired of being told that she had lovely eyes, and the most fascinating smile, she knew all that by heart, and craved for something new. Mr. Pennell had supplied the novelty by talking to her as if her intellect were on a level with his own--as if she were perfectly able to understand and sympathise with his quixotic plans for the alleviation of the woes of all mankind--with his Arcadian dreams of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity,--and might help them also, if she chose, not with money only, but by raising her own voice in the Cause of the People. Harriet had never been treated so by anyone before, and her ardent, impetuous, passionate nature, which had a large amount of gratitude in its composition, fixed itself upon her new friend with a vehemence which neither of them would find it easy to overcome--or to disentangle themselves from. Her love (eager to repair the void left by the desertion of Captain Pullen) had poured itself, by means of looks and sighs and little timid, tender touches upon Anthony Pennell like a mountain torrent that had burst its bounds, and he had been responsive--he had opened his arms to receive the flood, actuated not only by the admiration which he had conceived for her from the first, but by the intense, yearning pity which her loneliness and friendlessness had evoked in his generous, compassionate nature. In fact they were desperately in love with each other, and Harriet was expecting each time he came, to hear Anthony Pennell say that he could no longer live without her. And Bobby looked on from a little distance--and suffered. The next time that Mr. Pennell came to see her, Harriet confided to him the mystery of the upstairs room, and asked his opinion as to what it could possibly mean.