She looked at Marius. As she read it, here was his chance. He could turn on his brother now. Surely he would dignify her by a champion, redeem the scene by a challenge, a duel. But he remained with his back to her, looking out into the darkness. "Mr. Lyndwood!" she said unsteadily. There was no answer. My lord crossed to the door and opened it. "Will you leave us the chamber, madam? I desire to speak with my brother." Slowly she took her gaze from Marius. She knew that she hated him also--ah, bitterly!--and that her heart sickened for vengeance on both of them. But she was conquered. She dared no more open defiance. "I have no wish to stay," she said, in a shaking voice. The Earl moved away from the door, and she passed him and went out. He did not speak to her, nor look at her as she left the room. As he closed the heavy door he gave a half-shudder, and the colour faded from his cheeks. "Marius!" he said, and his voice had changed again to softness. The younger man turned sharply round. "Forgive me, my lord," he said wildly. "Forgive me!" "What have I to forgive?" answered the Earl sadly. "I am sorry for it, Marius. God knows that I am sorry for it--for you, I mean." "But it could never have been," continued my lord. "She--it is not there, Marius." He crossed wearily to the desk and seated himself before the blank sheet of paper and the new quill. "I perceive it," whispered Marius. The Earl moved the candle on the desk further away from him, as if the light troubled his eyes. "You must not altogether blame me, Marius; I think in no case would your idyll have survived." His back was towards his brother, who did not look in his direction but straightly out at the darkness beyond the window; they had never been intimate, nor had either often been in the other's thoughts, but now the kinship told, there was a sense of perfect understanding between them that required no words to make plain. "You had better go to London as you proposed," said my lord. "There is nothing for you to do here, and Lord Willouby will be expecting to see you." Marius came up to the desk. "Yes, I will go, sir--only, this----" He stopped; the Earl pushed back his chair and looked up. Marius was flushed, his lips taut and his forehead strained to a frown; he appeared piteously young to have such an expression of gravity on his fair face. "What would you say?" asked his brother gently. "The money," said Marius huskily and bluntly. "I could not--Mr. Hilton's money--_her_ money;" he seemed to choke over the word, then added desperately, "she taunted us with it." "For the last time," answered my lord quietly, gazing with resolute grey eyes at the younger man's troubled countenance, "and she shamed herself, not us--what is she but a boarding-school Miss? and the money is mine, Marius, no gift, but something earned, by God, earned."