"Well, I am mad, if you like--madly in love with you. What am I to do? If with some show of decency I can recover my liberty--by an appeal to Lady Geraldine's generosity, for instance--believe me, I shall not break her heart; our mutual regard is the calmest, coolest sentiment possible--if I can get myself free from this engagement, will you be my wife, Clarissa?" "No; a thousand times no." "You don't care for me, then? The madness is all on my side?" "The madness--if you are really in earnest, and not carrying on some absurd jest--is all on your side." "Well, that seems hard. I was vain enough to think otherwise. I thought so strong a feeling on one side could not co-exist with perfect indifference on the other. I fancied there was something like predestination in this, and that my wandering unwedded soul had met its other half--it's an old Greek notion, you know, that men and women were made in pairs--but I was miserably mistaken, I suppose. How many lovers have you rejected since you left school, Miss Lovel?" he asked with a short bitter laugh. "Geraldine herself could not have given me my quietus more coldly." He was evidently wounded to the quick, being a creature spoiled by easy conquests, and would have gone on perhaps in the same angry strain, but there was a light step on the floor within, and Lady Laura Armstrong came quickly towards the balcony. "My dearest Clary, Captain Westleigh tells me that you are quite knocked up--" she began; and then recognizing the belated traveller, cried out, "George Fairfax! Is it possible?" "George Fairfax, my dear Lady Laura, and not quite so base a delinquent as he seems. I must plead guilty to pushing matters to the last limit; but I made my plans to be here at seven o'clock this evening, and should inevitably have arrived at that hour, but for a smash between Edinburgh and Carlisle." "An accident! Were you hurt?" "Not so much as shaken; but the break-down lost me half a dozen hours. We were stuck for no end of time at a dingy little station whose name I forget, and when I did reach Carlisle, it was too late for any train to bring me on, except the night-mail, which does not stop at Holborough. I had to post from York, and arrived about ten minutes ago--too late for anything except to prove to you that I did make heroic efforts to keep my word." "And how, in goodness' name, did you get here, to this room, without my seeing you?" "From the garden. Finding myself too late to make an appearance in the ball-room, I prowled round the premises, listening to the sounds of revelry within; and then seeing Miss Lovel alone here--playing Juliet without a Romeo--I made so bold as to accost her and charge her with a message for you."