The tall stranger was observed to bow slightly. "As I say, I beg the favor of speaking to Miss Heth a few moments--privately. Of course I shouldn't venture to trespass so, if the matter weren't vitally important--" "Who are you?" demanded the great young man with rather more impatience than seemed necessary. "And what do you wish to speak to her about? Speak plainly, I beg, and be brief!" The two men stood facing each other in the faint light. Ten feet of summer-house floor was between them, yet something in their position was indefinably suggestive of a conflict. "I should explain," said the intruder, dim in the doorway, "that I come as a friend of poor Dalhousie--the boy who got into all the trouble ... Ah...." The involuntary ejaculation, briefly arresting his speech, was his perfect tribute to the girl's beauty now suddenly revealed to him. For Carlisle had unconsciously leaned forward out of the shadows of the bench just then, a cold hand laid along her heart. "This afternoon," the man recovered, with a somewhat embarrassed rush. "I--I appreciate, I needn't say, that it seems a great liberty, to--" "Liberty is scarcely the word," said Hugo Canning, fighting the lady's battle with lordly assurance. "Miss Heth declines to hear...." But the stranger's vivid voice bore him down: "_Do you, Miss Heth?_... The situation is terribly serious, you see. I don't want to alarm you unnecessarily, but--I--I'm afraid he may take matters into his own hands--" Canning took an impatient step forward. "Nevertheless, it's pure impudence for him to send to this lady, sneaking for favors now. Let's--" "Mr. Canning, I--I'm afraid I _ought_ to speak to him!" "_What?_" said Mr. Canning, wheeling at the voice, as if stung. "_Oh!... That's kind of you!_" Carlisle felt, under Mr. Canning's incredulous gaze, that this sudden upwhirl of misfortune was the further refinement of cruelty. She hardly knew what to do. Scarcely thinkable as it was to dismiss Hugo Canning from her presence, it seemed even more impossible to pack off this nameless intruder. Inconceivable malignity of chance, indeed! Only one doubt of its all being settled and blown over had lingered on to trouble her; and now without warning this doubt rose and rushed upon her in the person of the sudden stranger--and before Mr. Canning, too. It occurred to her, with ominous sinkings of the heart, that she had relied mistakenly upon Dalhousie's gentlemanliness. What horrid intention was concealed behind these strange words about his taking matters into his own hands? And suppose she refused to see the emissary alone, and he then said: "Well, then, I'll just have to speak before your friend."... What would Mr. Canning think of her then? What was he going to think of her anyway? Carlisle, having risen, answered her protector's gaze with a look of appealing sweetness, and said in a low, perturbed voice: