At last a footstep sounded from the woods; it was a man's step coming rapidly through the leaves. It had a hard sound, and I felt sure that the man was desperate. She evidently thought otherwise. Her arms fell helplessly down, and she crept back to the rock, white and still, but with her face turned away as if she would not let him see how anxious she was. He came up to the rock from the woods, crossed the footpath with a single stride, and stood before her so stern, so bitterly incensed, that she shrunk away from his first glance, yet a flash of irresistible joy shot to the eyes with which she eagerly questioned him. "Well!" The lips from which this word came were almost smiling. Nature was strong in the woman, and, spite of her selfishness, she exulted over the ruin of her own plans. "Well!" was the bitter response; "I have humiliated myself like a hound--proposed and am rejected." The woman sprang toward him with both hands extended; but he stepped back, and she clasped them in an outgush of joy. "Then it is over! Oh, heavens, how glad I am! this hour has been such torture! What would a whole life be? I should go mad. Let the property go--sweep the whole thing aside! How many poor people in the world are happy! In poverty or out of it, you and I will be all in all to each other!" She was "pure womanly" then, notwithstanding her crafty nature and bad heart; there was something in her abandonment that made my blood thrill. But Lawrence stepped back, and his face clouded. She looked at him in amazement. "What is this? Can wounded vanity affect you so much?" "Wounded vanity, madam? Will you forever misunderstand me? How dare you consider me as an accomplice in your odious designs? If I have passed them by in silence, it was no sign that I approved or shared them." These words were uttered with the force of terrible indignation. The woman to whom they were addressed stood confounded before the speaker, whom she had evidently, up to that moment, believed to be her lover. "Lawrence--Lawrence! can this be real?" at last broke from her quivering lips. While speaking, she laid her hand on his arm, but he pushed it off loathingly, as if a reptile had been creeping over him. At this repulse, all the queenliness of her air fell away, and she seemed to shrink into a smaller person. The anguish so evident in her face appeared to touch his compassion; his features cleared themselves of stormy rage and hardened like marble. He took one of her hands in a firm grasp, and addressed her from that moment in a low, concentrated voice, that thrilled through one as nothing but true feeling can. "Mrs. Dennison, this is the last time that you and I shall ever converse together." The woman uttered a low cry, and seized his arm with her disengaged hand. He paused an instant, glanced calmly down at her hand, which clung trembling to his sleeve, and went on:--