She drew her hands quickly across her eyes, and was conscious that the man had flung his hat and coat on the bed before he turned to face her.

In a moment all her fear was gone.

She stumbled weakly as she ran toward him, crying hysterically, “Jack, dear Jack, how did you find me?  I should have gone mad if you had been much later!  Take me home!  Take me home—­”

Had Miss Moreland fainted, as a well-conducted girl of her class ought to have done, this would have been a very different kind of a story.

Unluckily, or luckily, according as one views life—­in the relief of his presence, all danger of that fled.  Unluckily for him, also, the appearance of his bride-elect in such an unexpected place was so appalling to him that his nerve failed him entirely.  Instead of clasping her in his arms as he should have done, he had the decency to recoil, and cover his face instinctively from her eyes.

Miss Moreland stopped as if turned to stone.

She was conscious at first of but one thing—­he had not expected to find her there.  He had not come to seek her.  Then, for what?

A sudden flash illumined her ignorance, and behind it she grasped at the vague accusation her other suitor had tried to make to her unwilling ears.

Her outstretched hands fell to her sides.

He still leaned against the wall, where the shock had flung him.  The exciting fumes of the wine he had drunk too recklessly evaporated, and only a dim recollection remained in his absolutely sobered brain of the idiotic wager, the ugly jest, the still more contemptible bravado that had sent him into this hell.

He did not attempt to speak.

When her strained voice said:  “Take me home, please,” he started and the fear that had been on her face was now on his.  A hundred dangers, of which she did not dream, stood between that room and a safe exit in which she should not be seen, and that much of this wretched business—­which he understood now only too well—­miscarry.

He started for the door.  “Stay here,” he said.  “You are perfectly safe,” and he went out, and closed and locked the door behind him.

For the man who plotted without, and the woman who sat like a stone within that room, the next half hour were equally horrible.  But time was no longer measured by her!

She never remembered much more of that evening.  She had a vague recollection that he came back.  She had a remembrance that he had helped her stand—­given her a glass of water—­and led her down the uncarpeted stairs out into the street.  Then she was conscious that she walked a little way.  Then that she had been helped into a carriage, and then she had jolted and jolted and jolted over the pavings, always with his pale face opposite, and she knew that his eyes were full of pity.  Then everything seemed to stop, but it was only the carriage that had come to a standstill.  She was in front of her own door.