“Want you? Good heavens! I would give my soul for you! But I won’t be played with. By some magic of your own you have made me love you, and you must take the consequences. Stella, I love you, and if you plight me your troth now, I _must_ marry you. If you now, in the face of what I have put before you and what you know, still choose to cling to me, I swear to you that I will marry no woman but you, and that you shall marry no man but me!” She looked into his face, flushed and excited as it was, his brown eyes shining like her own. “On my honor, I swear,” she said, solemnly, “that whatever pressure is brought to bear upon me, I will marry no one but you, Hilary Pritchard.” Their lips met in that interminably long kiss of first love, given and returned, the kiss which comes once in a lifetime to a chosen few, and to many comes never at all--a kiss in which time and space are obliterated, and in which two spirits seem to meet in regions far beyond this work-a-day world of ours. Moved out of herself, in an ecstasy of emotion, perhaps at the happiest, certainly at the first perfectly happy moment of her life, Stella felt rather than heard a harsh, low-pitched voice, asking for Miss Cranstoun in the hall immediately outside the coffee-room. She turned instinctively toward Hilary for protection as she whispered: “It is my father!” He flung his arm round her and held her to him a moment. The next, the door was burst open, and Sir Philip Cranstoun stood before them, white and quivering with rage. For a moment he stared at the pair before him, taking in every detail of Hilary’s appearance. Then he addressed his daughter in tones of withering scorn. “May I ask who is this person with whom you appear to be on such extremely familiar terms?” Stella slipped her hand within Hilary’s and gained strength from the contact. “It is Mr. Hilary Pritchard,” she said, “the gentleman I have promised to marry.” CHAPTER XIII. THE SENDING OF THE TOKEN. At seven o’clock that same morning, Sir Philip had been aroused from his slumbers by Dakin. “I beg your pardon, sir,” said the spy, “but I can’t help thinking Miss Cranstoun has somehow got away. You see, you have taken away the key of her room, and I can see a good way in through the keyhole. And the bed’s empty; it doesn’t look as if it had been slept in, and I can’t see any sign of her walking about the room.” With a muttered execration, Sir Philip dismissed Dakin, and, hastily dressing himself, repaired to the door of Stella’s room and rapped several times sharply upon the panels. Getting no answer, he turned the key in the lock and called to her to come out, before throwing the door open, to find that the bird had flown.