“Poor chap! It is something very, very serious,” he mused. “Nothing but terrible trouble would work a man up like that. I wonder if--” He started and shuddered. Mrs. Barry's pale, troubled face of the morning came before him, then Dora's downcast attitude as he had seen her in the choir only a few moments before. He started, and his blood ran cold through his veins. Could it be possible--could any man sink low enough to--? No; he would not even think of it, else he would regret not having killed the man as he sat bowed before him. No, it wasn't that--the human monster did not live who could pluck and stamp upon that beautiful and helpless flower of maidenhood. He extinguished the lamp, went out into the dark street, and closed his door. The congregation was leaving the church as he reached it. Among the last to go was Dora. He fell in behind her, but made no effort to catch her up. She had shown no willingness to talk to him that morning, and he would not disturb her now. Perhaps the girl was really in love with Walton, and had gleaned some inkling of the young man's trouble. Yes, that would explain her present depression. He walked behind her till she disappeared at the cottage gate; then he turned and went homeward past Kenneth Galt's grounds. He saw a spark of fire moving about under the trees to the right of the gloomy-looking residence which to-night seemed devoid of any light, and knew that Galt was there smoking alone, as was his habit at that hour. Dearing put his hand out to the gate-latch. Perhaps a chat with his philosophic friend would help clear his brain of the maddening thoughts which surged about him, but he paused. “No; Madge will be up waiting for me,” he reflected. “I may as well meet her and let her know the worst. Poor girl, she'll have to be brave!” He moved on to his own gate. There was no one on the veranda, as was often the case in warm weather, but in a little pagoda-shaped summer-house on the lawn he descried a white object. It stirred as the hinges of the gate creaked, and he entered, It was Margaret, and she came to him like a spirit across the grass. “I told you I'd wait,” she reminded him, and her voice sounded strange and even harsh in its guttural tendency. “I thought you'd never come.” Through all that had passed between him and Fred Walton that night Dealing's anger and resentment had been held in check by sympathy for the man in his desperate plight and despair; but now, as he saw the evidences of his sister's agony written all too plainly upon her young being, his indignation kindled. The scoundrel, the coward, was running away to keep from facing public opinion, yet was leaving this poor, crushed girl to suffer in consequence of his conduct! “You ought not to have waited,” he reproached her, in a tone she had never heard him use. “Your being here now, looking like this, is an acknowledgment that you actually _care_ for the cowardly cur--you, who ought to--”