The day came on which Rupert was to return to London. Scarcely a word had been interchanged between him and Kitty since the conversation which has been recorded. She thought, as she stole furtive glances towards him from time to time, that he looked harassed, and even depressed, but in manner he was more cheerful than it was his custom to be. When the time came for saying good-bye, he held out his hand to her with a kindly smile. "Come, Kitty," he said, "let us be friends." Her heart gave a wild leap which seemed almost to suffocate her; she looked up into his face with changing colour and eager eyes. "I am sorry," she began, with a little gasp. "I did not mean all I said the other day, and I wanted to tell you----" To herself it seemed as if these words were a tremendous self-betrayal; to Vivian they were less than nothing--commonplace sentences enough; uttered in a frightened, childish tone. "Did you not mean it all?" he said, giving her hand a friendly pressure. "Well, never mind; neither did I. We are quits, are we not? I will not obtrude my advice upon you again, and you must forgive me for having already done so. Good-bye, my dear child; I trust you will be happy." "I shall never be happy," said Kitty, withdrawing her hand from his, "never, never, never!" And then she burst into tears and rushed out of the room. Vivian looked after her with a slightly puzzled expression, but did not attempt to call her back. It was not a very favourable day for Hugo's suit, and he was received that afternoon in anything but a sunshiny mood by Miss Heron. For almost the first time she snubbed him unmercifully, but he had been treated with so much graciousness on all previous occasions that the snubs did not produce very much impression upon him. And, finding himself alone with her for a few minutes, he was rash enough to make the venture upon which he had set his heart, without considering whether he had chosen the best moment for the experiment or not. Accordingly, he failed. A few brief words passed between them, but the few were sufficient to convince Hugo Luttrell that he had never won Kitty Heron's heart. To his infinite surprise and mortification, she refused his offer of marriage most decidedly. CHAPTER XLII. A FALSE ALARM. Angela's departure from Netherglen had already taken place. Hugo was not sorry that she was gone. Her gentle words and ways were a restraint upon him: he felt obliged to command himself in her presence. And self-command was becoming more and more a difficult task. What he wanted to say or to do presented itself to him with overmastering force: it seemed foolishly weak to give up, for the sake of a mere scruple of conscience, any design on which he had set his heart. And above all things in life he desired just now to win Kitty Heron for himself.