He glanced towards her as he spoke, and she flushed faintly beneath his scrutiny. The latter part of the speech pricked her like an arrow sped from the past, though it was difficult to estimate from the man's impassive face whether or no he had actually intended to imply a deeper significance than the surface meaning which the words conveyed. Cara felt that she must know--at any cost she must know. "Is that meant as a--protest?" she asked, assuming an air of playful indifference which she was very far from feeling. "Am I intended to take it as a rebuke?" Perhaps the light detachment of her manner jangled some long-silent chord, roused an echo from the past, for his face darkened. "You can take it so, if you wish," he said curtly. She was silent. In that brief question and answer she had covertly appealed for mercy and had received judgment--the same judgment which had been pronounced against her years ago. She had never thought it possible that Eliot would learn to care for her again. She knew the man too well to believe that he would have any love left to give the woman who had despoiled him of all a man values--broken his faith, destroyed the ideals that had once been his. Moreover, she had seen clear down into his soul that day at Berrier Cove, when Ann had come within an ace of death, and she knew that on the ruins of the old love a new love was building. But, deep within her, she had hoped that Eliot's savage bitterness towards her might have softened with the passage of time--that perhaps he had learned to tincture his contempt for her with a little understanding and compassion, allowing something in excuse for youth and for the long, grinding years of poverty which had ground the courage out of her and driven her into making that one ghastly mistake for which life had exacted such a heavy penalty. She knew now that she had hoped in vain. He was as merciless as he had been that day, ten years ago, when he had turned away and left her alone in an old Italian garden, with the happy sunlight and the scent of flowers mocking the half-realised despair at her heart. "Then you haven't ever--forgiven me?" she said at last, haltingly. He stared at her. "Isn't that rather a curious question to ask? You killed everything in life that mattered--damned my chances of happiness once and for always.... No, I don't think I've forgiven you. I've endeavoured to forget you." He paused, then added with a brief, ironic laugh: "It was a queer joke for fate to play--bringing us both to the same neighbourhood." "I didn't know," said Cara hastily. "You know that, don't you? I had no idea you lived here when I bought the Priory. Even when I heard--afterwards--that a Mr. Coventry owned Heronsmere, I never dreamed it could be you. You see, I was told he was very wealthy--" "And the Coventry you knew was--poor!" It was like the thrust of a rapier, and Cara winced under the concentrated scorn of the bitter speech.