‘Roma, I cannot understand. Why should we wait? He must be told sometime—unless, indeed, you mean to sell yourself, and marry——’ ‘Oh no, no, Marco! how can you be so cruel? I will never marry him; but I cannot tell my father yet. You must trust me; you must be patient.’ ‘If only you would explain! How can things get anything but worse by waiting? I know Philip Debenham well, Roma. He will hold you to your promise through everything. He never gives way when once his mind is made up. You stand in great danger.’ Something in the warning tone made Roma tremble. Had the man she had believed in played her false? Would he hold her to her plighted word? ‘Let me go in, Marco,’ she said in low, trembling tones. ‘I am very miserable. I don’t know what to say or what to think. I do love you; but you must bear with me. Some day I will tell you all; till then you _must_ keep silence. Think as kindly of me as you can. I must speak to Philip before I can speak to you any more of—of—love.’ She turned and left him, and Phil, with a dark look on his face, turned and shook his fist in the direction of Ladywell Manor. ‘Torrington Torwood,’ he said slowly and deliberately, ‘I will make you pay for this!’ CHAPTER VII. THE LAST STRAW. It was very well for Roma to tell Phil that he was not to speak again to her of love; but he was not at all prepared to submit to such a prohibition. Roma loved him, and had admitted her love, therefore he had a right to assume towards her something of a lover’s part. ‘All is fair in love and war,’ he said to himself; and he felt that against his false friend any step he chose to take was fair. The fact that he had, by flattering the father’s foolish vanity, obtained the promise of the daughter’s hand against her own will, added fuel to the fire of his anger against Tor, which he had been able only fitfully to keep burning so far; and he now felt that he could proceed to severe measures with less scruple than heretofore. Roma was unhappy; he saw that plainly through the evening hours that followed their declaration of mutual love; and the thought that Tor was making her suffer was enough to rouse, and to keep stirring within him, deep feelings of animosity and scorn. Roma need not have been unhappy; but when a false position has been forced upon a woman, it must sooner or later become a trouble and an anxiety. The girl had, in a great measure, forced herself into the position she thus occupied, by her feverish dread of agitating her father, by the promise she had obtained from Tor, and by her determination to sacrifice anything—her life’s happiness, if need be—to his whims, which in her eyes were sacred.