"Mamma seemed horrified. She begged me not to come back to you. In order to delay my coming, she told the doctor to keep me in bed, though I was practically well. I did not know what to do. I pretended to give in. Then she went to town--this morning--for a day's shopping or something, and Grover and I ran away without telling anybody. I hope you think I did right. You see, I knew I ought to come; I would not have deceived mamma, but my first duty is to you, and Grover told me that she had done something she really had no right to do. She had intercepted a letter from me to you. Ah, I know, it was partly my fault. I don't know what I may have said when I was wandering. She thought she was acting for the best, no doubt. But I felt unsafe somehow." "I suppose you mean," said Gaunt slowly, "that your mother thought you had better not come back to me at all?" "I think so--yes. She said the law would give me relief----" "She was very probably right. And yet--you came? ... It did not strike you that that was a foolish thing to do? You did not reflect that possession is nine points of the law?" He was looking fully at her, voice and eyes alike charged with meaning which could not be mistaken. She did not flinch. Her brown eyes told him that she had reflected, that in returning she was fully conscious of the finality of her action. "I had not to consider that," was her instant reply. "I had to do what I knew to be right. I had to keep my word." She spoke most evidently without any desire to create an effect. The listening man restrained himself with difficulty, but held on for a moment, to elucidate one more point. "You came back, perhaps, in order to lay the case before me? To see if I would set you free?" "Certainly not," was the steady answer. "You and I made an agreement. You have kept your half--you have done all you promised; but I"--the colour rushed over her face--"I have not done any of my share." Not at all theatrically, but as naturally as an old Italian peasant will kiss the Madonna's feet, he slipped from his chair to his knees. So quietly that it did not startle Virginia at all, he took up one of the hands that lay in her lap and raised it to his lips. The action, so unlike him, the silence in which he performed it, amazed her so that she neither moved nor spoke. He replaced her hand, laying it tenderly down, and seemed as though he would speak, from his lowly position at her feet. Then, with his own brusque suddenness, he rose, and stood beside her, almost over her.