For what could she do to injure him, after all? And, whatever his plans were, how could he ever imagine her interfering with them, when to do so would be to betray her own secret? She lay there in the dreary dawn and tried to work her way through the labyrinth. And then, all at once, it came to her: what if he wanted to marry Lilla? And what more probable than that he did? It was evident that living with his people and administering Mr. Maclew’s philanthropies was not a life that he would have called “fit for a dog”. He liked money, she knew, for all his careless way; he wanted to have it, but he hated to earn it. And if he married Lilla there would be plenty of money. The Drovers would see to that--Kate could imagine nothing more likely to unloose their purse-strings than the possibility of “settling” Lilla, and getting rid of the perpetual menace that her roving fancies hung over her mother’s neatly-waved head. Chris, of course, was far too clever not to have seen that, and worked out the consequences in his own mind. If Lilla had been plain and dowdy he wouldn’t even have considered it--Kate did him that justice. If he liked money he liked it in a large lordly way, and only as one among several things which it was convenient but not essential to have. He would never do a base thing for money; but, after all, there was nothing base in marrying Lilla if he liked her looks and was amused by her talk, as he probably was. There was one side of Chris, the side Kate Clephane had least explored, and was least capable of understanding, which might very well find its complement in Lilla.... Kate’s aching eyes continued to strain into the future. If that were really his plan, of course he would be afraid of her! For he knew her too, knew her ever so much better than she did him, and would be sure to guess that, much as she would want to cover up their past, she would not hesitate a moment between revealing it and doing what she called her duty. Her duty--how he used to laugh at the phrase! He told her she had run away from her real duties only for the pleasure of inventing new ones, and that to her they were none the less duties because she imagined them to be defiances. It was one of the paradoxes that most amused him: the picture of her flying from her conscience and always meeting it again in her path, barely disguised by the audacities she had dressed it up in.