She paused again. Quick and clever as he was, she was no less so. She weighed the question. Perhaps she found no answer to it, for she turned toward the door that stood open and looked out into the hall. The light of the lamp there fell for a moment across her face. "I think I hear them returning," she said. "No," he retorted, "for I should hear them before you did. I was brought up at sea. Do not answer the question, however, if you would rather not. You ask what has happened since I went away. A great many things have happened which are of no importance. Such things always happen, do they not? But one night, when we were quarrelling, Dormer Colville mentioned your name. He was very much alarmed and very angry, so he perhaps spoke the truth--by accident. He said that you had always known that I might be the King of France. Many things happened, as I tell you, which are of no importance, and which I have already forgotten, but that I remember and always shall." "I have always known," replied Miriam, "that Mr. Dormer Colville is a liar. It is written on his face, for those who care to read." A woman at bay is rarely merciful. "And I thought for an instant," pursued Loo, "that such a knowledge might have been in your mind that night, the last I was here, last summer, on the river-wall. I had a vague idea that it might have influenced in some way the reply you gave me then." He had come a step nearer and was standing over her. She could hear his hurried breathing. "Oh, no," she replied, in a calm voice full of friendliness. "You are quite wrong. The reason I gave you still holds good, and--and always will." In the brief silence that followed this clear statement of affairs, they both heard the rattle of the iron gate by the seawall. Sep and his father were coming. Loo turned to look toward the hall and the front door, dimly visible in the shadow of the porch. While he did so Miriam passed her hand quickly across her face. When Loo turned again and glanced down at her, her attitude was unchanged. "Will you look at me and say that again?" he asked, slowly. "Certainly," she replied. And she rose from her chair. She turned and faced him with the light of the hall-lamp full upon her. She was smiling and self-confident. "I thought," he said, looking at her closely, "as I stood behind you, that there were tears in your eyes." She went past him into the hall to meet Sep and his father, who were already on the threshold. "It must have been the firelight," she said to Barebone as she passed him. A minute later Septimus Marvin was shaking him by the hand with a vague and uncertain but kindly grasp. "Sep came running to tell me that you were home again," he said, struggling out of his overcoat. "Yes--yes. Home again to the old place. And little changed, I can see. Little changed, my boy. _Tempora mutantur_, eh? and we _mutamur in illis_. But you are the same." "Of course. Why should I change? It is too late to change for the better now."