"And is that all?" asked Harry gently. "Am I to know nothing beyond that meeting at the gate?" "No, I will tell you the very last I saw of your father--and I will tell you what I think. The very last I saw of him was when they all three went out together after talking for a few minutes in the dining-room below mine. I did not hear a word. What I think is--may God forgive me, whether I am right or wrong--that the flight was arranged in those few minutes." "You think your father knew all about it?" "I cannot help thinking that." "When did he come back?" The girl turned white. "Your promise!" she gasped. "You promised to ask no more questions!" "I see," said Harry, grimly. "Your father crossed the Channel with mine. This is news indeed!" "It is not!" cried Miss Lowndes. "I don't admit it. I don't know it. I don't believe it. He told me he had been up in Scotland; he was always going up to Scotland then. Oh, why do you try to wring more from me than I know? I have told you all I know for a fact. Why do you break your promise?" "I didn't mean to," he answered brokenly. "And yet--it was my duty--to my poor father." "Your father is gone," she cried. "Spare mine--and me." "Do you mean that he is--dead?" She looked at him an instant with startled eyes, as though his had read the secret suspicion of her heart; then with a wild sob, "I do not know, I do not know," she cried piteously. With that she burst into tears. He tried to soothe her. "Leave me--leave me," was all her answer, and in his helplessness he turned to do so--to leave her bowed down and weeping passionately--weeping as he had never seen woman weep before--in the chair from which she had risen to welcome him--with that foolish paper still lying crumpled at her feet. It was so he saw her when he turned again at the door, for a last look at his friend. The white fog pressed against the panes; a little mist there was in the room, but the fire burnt very brightly, and against the glow were those small ears pink with shame, those strong hands racked with anguish, that fine head bowed low, that lissom figure bent double in the beautiful abandon of a woman's grief. Young blood took fire. He forgot everything but her. He could not and he would not leave her so; in an instant his arms were about her, he was kissing her hair. "I love you--I love you--I love you!" he whispered. "Let us think of nothing else. If we are never to see each other again, thank God I have told you that!" She pushed him back in horror. "But it is dreadful, if it is true," she said; and yet she held her breath until he vowed it was. "I have loved you for months," he said, "though I didn't know it at first. I never meant to love you. I couldn't help myself--it makes me love you all the more." And his arms were round her once more, in the first earnest passion of his life, in the first sweet flood of that passion.