Bates and Mrs. Norris, stiff-backed, against the wall, and Anne Elliott and Elizabeth Bennet, Mr. Collins and the rest. The fiddlers scraping, the negus for refreshment, the night darkening, the carriages with their lights gathering. . . . 

 The door at the far end of the room closed with a gentle click. He started, not imagining that any one would choose that room at such an hour. 

 Two figures were there in the shadow beyond the end room. The light fell on the man's face—Harkness could see it very clearly. The other was a woman wearing a white dress. He could not see her face. 

 For an instant they were silent, then the man said something that Harkness could not hear. 

 The girl at once broke out: "No, no. Oh, please, Herrick." 

 She must be a very young girl. The voice was that of a child. It had in it a desperate note that held Harkness's attention instantly. 

 The man said something again, very low. 

 "But if you don't care," the girl's voice pleaded, "then let me go back. Oh, Herrick, let me go! Let me go!" 

 "My father does not wish it." 

 "But I am not married to your father. It is to you." 

 "My father and I are the same. What he says I must do, I do." 

 "But you can't be the same." Her voice now was trembling in its urgency. "No one could love their father more than I do and yet we are not the same." 

 "Nevertheless you did what your father asked you to do. So must I." 

 "But I didn't know. I didn't know. And he didn't know. He has never seen me frightened of anything, and now I am frightened. . . . I've never said I was to any one before, but now . . . now . . ." 

 She was crying, softly, terribly, with the terrified crying of real and desperate fear. 

 Harkness had been about to move. He did not, unseen and his presence unrealised, wish to overhear, but her tears checked him. Although he could not see her he had detected in her voice a note of pride. He fancied that she would wish anything rather than to be thus seen by a stranger. He stayed where he was. He 

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