She goes to the door.

“You cannot go like this,” says Rylton, with some agitation.  “Stay here to-night.  I shall have time to catch the up-train, and I have business in town; and besides——­”

“Do not lie!” says she.  She stops and faces him; her eyes are aflame, and she throws out her right arm with a gesture that must be called magnificent.  It fills him with a sort of admiration.  “I want no hollow courtesies from you.”  She stoops, and gathering up her wraps, folds them around her.  Then she turns to him again.  “As all is dead between us.”  She stops short.  “Oh no!”—­laying her hand upon her heart.—­“As all is dead in you——­”

Whether her strength forsakes her here, or whether she refuses to say more, he never knows.  She opens the door and goes into the hall, and, seeing a servant, beckons to him.

Rylton follows her, but, seeing him coming, she turns and waves him back.  One last word she flings at him.

“Remember your reputation.”

He can hear the bitterness of her laugh as she runs down the stone steps into the fly outside.  She had evidently told the man to wait.

CHAPTER XXIV.

HOW TITA PLEADS HER CAUSE WITH MARGARET; AND HOW MARGARET REBUKES HER; AND HOW STEPS ARE HEARD, AND TITA SEEKS SECLUSION BEHIND A JAPANESE SCREEN; AND WHAT COMES OF IT.

“What hour did he say he was coming?” asks Tita, looking up suddenly from the book she has been pretending to read.

“About four.  I wish, dearest, you would consent to see him.”

“I consent?  Four, you say?  And it is just three now.  A whole hour before I feel his hated presence in the house.  Where are you going to receive him?”

“In the small drawing-room, I suppose.”

“You suppose. Margaret, is it possible you have not given directions to James?  Why, he might show him in here."

“Well, even if he did,” says Margaret impatiently, “I don’t suppose he would do you any bodily harm.  Once you saw him the ice would be broken, and——­”

“We should both fall in and be drowned.  It would only make matters worse, I assure you.”

“It would be a change at all events, and ‘variety is charming.’  As it is, you have both fallen out.”

“You are getting too funny for anything,” says Tita, tilting her chin saucily.

“Now, if you were to do as you suggest, fall in—­in love—­with each other——­”

“Really, Margaret, this is beneath you,” says Tita, laughing in spite of herself.  “No! no! no!  I tell you,” starting to her feet, “I’d rather die than meet him again.  When you and Colonel Neilson are married——­”

“Oh! as to that," says Margaret, but she colours faintly.

“I shall take a tiny cottage in the country, and a tiny maid; and I’ll have chickens, and a big dog, and a pony and trap, and——­”