He looks deliberately at her, as if to explain his meaning, but, nothing coming of the look, he falls back once more upon facts. ‘I come here sometimes,’ says he. ‘Yes; Mrs. Denis told me that,’ says the girl. ‘But’—eagerly—‘I shouldn’t be in the way at all. I could stay in that little room belonging to Mrs. Denis—that little room off the kitchen.’ ‘Oh, that isn’t it,’ says Wyndham, frowning in his embarrassment. How the deuce is one to say it plainly to a girl who can’t, or won’t, or doesn’t understand! ‘The fact is——’ He has begun with the greatest bravery, determined to explain the situation at all hazards; but, happening to meet her eyes, this clever barrister, who has faced many a barefaced criminal victoriously, breaks down. The eyes he has looked into are full of tears. ‘Look here,’ says he almost savagely, ‘it’s out of the question! Do you hear?’ His tone is so terribly abrupt that it strikes cold to the heart of the poor girl looking at him. If he is going to turn her out of this house, this haven of refuge, where—where can she go? She struggles with herself, some touch of dignity that belongs to her—wherever she came from or whoever she is—giving her a certain strength. ‘Of course—I see——’ She is beginning to stammer dreadfully. ‘I am sorry about it; but I thought—I fancied I could stay here. But now I can go—I can go somewhere. There must be other places, and, indeed, just now you told me there were other places, and that I could go to——’ She struggles with the word ‘them,’ the last of her sad sentence, but can’t speak it; and now all her hard-found dignity gives way, to her everlasting shame, and to Wyndham’s terrible discomfiture she bursts into a passion of tears. ‘Don’t do that,’ says Wyndham gruffly. It is impossible to conceal from himself the fact that he is frightened out of his life. Fear because of her tears is nothing, but it is with ever-increasing self-contempt that he knows that he is going even so far as to give in and let her stay at the Cottage. After all, there are many other places for him in this big world, but for her, perhaps, not so many; and she seems to have set her heart on this little spot, and, hang it all! why can’t she stop crying? ‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ says she at last, trying passionately to stifle her sobs. She has turned away from him to the window, and there is something in her whole attitude so descriptive of despair, and fear, and shame, that, in spite of his anger, pity for her rises in his heart. ‘I don’t know why I’m crying; I don’t often cry. But if I leave this, where shall I go? where shall I hide myself?’ What on earth has she done? Her words denote fear—a guilty fear. What if he should be about to take as a tenant for the Cottage a well known and hardened criminal, for whom, perhaps, the police are even now on the look-out? Her face, however, belies her tone; and, for the rest, he has not the courage to face again a flow of those pitiful tears. Stay she must.