"I know he has not come home," he said. "But that was not my question. You have been at Mrs. Hayley's where he spends quite as much of his time as here. Have you seen him?" Elsie Brand would have given the proudest feature of her personal adornment, at that moment, to be able to lie! She saw that some undefined anxiety with reference to her brother must have moved her father's repeated questions, and naturally she feared the worst--that Carlton's mad words had indeed been overheard, and that even in that brief space of time some messenger of evil had travelled fast and betrayed the fatal secret. If so, the storm was about to burst on the devoted head of her brother, not the less deadly because she must bear the first brunt of its violence. Yes--Elsie Brand would almost have given her right hand to be able to lie at that moment. But her education had been as true as was her nature, and she managed to falter out, yet more suspiciously: "Yes, father!" "And you _dared_ to trifle with me, girl, when I asked you a plain question?" and Robert Brand grasped his daughter by the arm so forcibly that she nearly screamed with the violent pressure, and tears did indeed start to her eyes as she sobbed out-- "I did not mean to trifle with you, father. I only thought--" "You thought that when I asked one question, I meant another, did you?" and the face that looked upon her was set, hard and very stern. "You had better not try the experiment again, if you do not wish to suffer for it!" "Oh, father!" and the young girl, enough broken before, now wept outright. But he stopped her, very roughly. "No bawling! not a whimper! Now listen to me. You have seen your brother since morning--since he went down to the rendezvous." "Yes, father." "You saw him at Mrs. Hayley's." "Yes, father." "And he came there to bid Margaret good-bye, before he went away, and you are such a miserable whining school-girl that you are making all this fuss about his absence. Is that the fact? Speak!" He still held her arm, though his grasp was less painful than it had been at first; and his eyes looked upon her with such a steady, anxious, almost fearful gaze, that it would have driven away the second temptation to falsehood, even had such a temptation once obtained power. There was nothing for it, at that moment, but to speak the truth so far as compelled. "No, father. Carlton is not going away." The last three words were uttered so low, and so tangled up among the sobs that she had not been able entirely to check, that they might not have been distinguishable except to the preternaturally acute ear of the suspicious father. "He is not going? Why?" The first words were harsh and loud--the last one was almost thunder, easily heard, if any one was listening, over the whole house. Before it the young girl shook like an aspen and broke out into fresh sobs as she attempted to answer. "Because--because his business will not allow--"