among the tangled grasses and dead leaves of the garden, when I stopped, and drew away from it. For I had heard voices.

I make no attempt to excuse my conduct; I only urge that at that time I was surrounded by mysteries, and by trickery of every sort, and that I was, moreover, in hiding, in peril of my liberty. All the world might be conspiring against me—above all, those in this house, with one exception, might be only too glad to give me up to justice. I was fighting for myself; I make no excuse that I crept near to the summer-house, and listened. More than that, I looked in, for through a chink of the ruined boarding at the back of it I could see clearly all that happened.

Debora Matchwick was seated in a corner, drawn up tense and still, with her hands gripping the seat on either side of her; and in the doorway, with his arms folded, completely blocking her way of escape, stood the doctor.

It would seem that I had arrived at the very moment the man had discovered her, for his first words referred to the previous day. Whatever other words I had heard had been but a mere skirmishing before the actual battle began.

"I lost you in this direction yesterday, Debora," said the man; "you managed to elude me rather cleverly. What makes you afraid of me?"

"I—I'm not afraid of you," she said, with more bravery than she seemed to feel.

He laughed at her, showing his white teeth. "You're very much afraid of me," he corrected her. "And yet you have no reason to be; we should never be afraid of those who love us."

"You are my guardian, and you were my father's friend," she said quietly. "Beyond that guardianship you have nothing to do with me, and I will not——"

"You talk like a child, and you have a child's knowledge of the world," he broke in roughly. "I that am a man can teach you, as only a man can teach a woman, what life and the world hold for her. Prudishly you step aside; with false modesty you refuse to look at facts as they are. You are a child no longer, in the ordinary sense of things; and I am a man that loves you. Your father liked me——"

"To my everlasting sorrow, he did!" she exclaimed passionately.

"And he would have approved of the arrangement. Above all things, the management of your extremely troublesome affairs are in my hands, and if you belonged to me the whole thing would 

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