"Captain Carbury, I mean. I brought him into the room with my father and mother--or my stepmother--and--he told them what he wanted. They sent me away--I was rather frightened when they did that--and when they had him all alone they spoke to him and they told him that he was to go out of my life, because, Lady Mary, your brother, Lord Hawtrey, was to come in. They said that they wanted me to marry your brother, and I won't--I can't--and I much want you to help me in this matter." "Upon my word!" said Lady Mary. She rose abruptly and began to pace the room. "You are the queerest girl I ever met! There must be some queer sort of witchery about you. On a certain night you are proposed to by my brother Hawtrey, the head of our house, one of the richest men in England, and certainly one of the most nobly born. You snub him, just as though he were a nobody. On the following morning you receive a proposal from Vernon Carbury, he who was engaged to Lady Dorothy Vinguard." "Yes, but all that is at an end," I said. "I know, I know. Dorothy is not a perfectly silly girl like you, and she is marrying a man older and richer and greater than Carbury. And so you have fallen in love with him? Yes, I know; those blue eyes of his would be certain to make havoc in more than one girl's heart. It is a pretty tale, upon my word it is, and out of the common. Now you have confided things to me, I don't think Hawtrey will trouble you any more; perhaps I can see to that. Would you like to go back home--and before you go, is there anything I can do for you?" "No, oh, no," I said, "you have made me quite happy!" "I am glad of that. You are a very strange girl; I suppose you will marry Captain Carbury some day. You are, of course, quite unaware of the fact that Hawtrey must have loved you beyond the ordinary when he made up his mind to take as a wife the daughter of Major Grayson?" I sprang to my feet. "What do you mean by those words?" "Don't you know, child, don't you know?" "I know nothing, except that my father is the best man in all the world." Lady Mary looked at me, at first with scorn, then a strange, new, softened, pitying expression flashed over her face. "You poor little girl!" she said. "Have you never suspected, have you never guessed, why he married Lady Helen Dalrymple, and why he took her name, and why----" "Don't tell me any more," I said, "please don't, I would rather not know. Good-bye--you have been kind, you have meant to be very kind, but you are hinting at something quite awful--all the same, I will find out--yes, I will find out! My father do a mean thing! Indeed, you little know him. Good-bye, Lady Mary." "Stay, child; the carriage must take you home." "No, I will walk," I said.