"Why, of course I'll stop," Mary said. "I'm not so tired as to desert you when you flatter me like that." "I'm not flattering, I'm depending on you." Never before, in her acquaintance with him, had the voice of Severance betrayed such agitation. Mary braced herself against a blow; but the melting thing inside began to congeal like cold candle-grease. Her knees felt like water. Still smiling, she sank rather than sat on a sofa, and held up her hand to Marise. "If Lord Severance has a confession to make, we'd better sit together in judgment," she proposed. "We'll be kind judges, and this shall be our throne." "Call it an appeal--a prayer--not a confession," Severance said. "If I'd ever prayed to God as I'm going to pray to you both, maybe I'd not be in the fix I'm in now." "One would think you were afraid of us!" quavered Marise. "I am," he admitted. "I was never in such a blue funk in my life. My legs are like poached eggs without toast." The girl laughed nervously. "You'd better sit down," she advised. "I couldn't to save my life. Might as well ask a chap on the rack to sing 'Araby.'" "You're really frightening us!" Mary's tone was shrill. "Have Bolsheviks blown up your family castles? Have you lost all your money? Aren't you the true heir to the title?" "I'm the heir right enough," Severance took her seriously. "And I haven't got any money--worth calling money. There's the rub! Marise, you know I love you?" The girl caught her breath. "Why--sometimes I've thought so." "You've known it, as well as you know you're alive. If I hadn't come into the beastly title I'd have asked you to marry me long ago. It was your own fault I didn't ask you, before my Cousin Eric died--the first one of the lot to go. You used to snub me every time I tried to speak of marrying. You didn't want to make up your mind!" "No, honestly, I didn't," she confessed. "I liked you a whole lot, Tony, but--I wasn't quite sure--of either of us, you see, and----" "You might have been sure of me! I couldn't look at any woman except you." "It wasn't that sort of thing--exactly. People--cats!--used to put such horrid ideas into my head." "What ideas?" "I simply can't tell you, Tony. Don't ask me, please." "Oh, well!" he flung out. "It doesn't matter much now what ideas you had then. Do you love me to-day, Marise?" "I--think I do--a little," she almost whispered, as her parent's arm (twined round her waist) pressed painfully against her side. "A little isn't enough!" Severance said. "It must be a big love to stand the strain." "The strain of what?" Mary, as a mother, intervened. "Of the sacrifice I'm going to ask--to beg, to implore--her to make." "Sacrifice? Do you mean anything about money?" Mrs. Sorel wanted to know. "You were quite right in calling me your friend. I can assure you it would be a joy to Marise if, in your trouble, her money----" "The trouble's worse than money."