“She lives in the little house over there.  I must go and speak to her.”

“Does she know?”

“No.”

“What have you to say to her, then?”

They looked into each other’s eyes for a moment.  Northway was gauging the strength of her character, and he half believed that by an exertion of all his energy he might overcome her, lead her away at once.  He remembered that before the close of this day Quarrier’s secret would be universally known, and when that had come to pass, he would have no hold upon either the man or the woman.  They would simply turn their backs upon him, and go beyond his reach.

He laid his hand upon her, and the touch, the look in his eyes, drove Lilian to the last refuge.

“You must go with me, then, to Mr. Quarrier,” she said, firmly.  “You have no power to stop me.  I shall go home, and you must follow me, if you choose.”

“No, you will go with me!  Do you hear?  I command you to come with me!”

It was his best imitation of resistless authority, and he saw, even in speaking, that he had miscalculated.  Lilian drew back a step and looked at him with defiance.

“Command me, you cannot.  I am as free from your control as any stranger.”

“Try, and see.  If you attempt to go back into the town, I shall hold you by force, and the consequences will be worse to you than to me.  Do as you please.”

Again her eyes turned to the distant roof of Peartree Cottage.  She, too, had estimated her strength and his She knew by instinct what his face meant—­the swollen, trembling lips, the hot eyes; and understood that he was capable of any baseness.  To attempt to reach her home would he an abandonment of all hope, the ruin of Denzil.  A means of escape from worst extremity, undiscoverable by her whirling brain, might suggest itself to such a mind as Mrs. Wade’s.  If only she could communicate with the cottage!

“Then I shall go to my friend here,” she said, pointing.

He hesitated.

“Who is she?”

“A lady who lives quite alone.”

“What’s the good of your going there?”

She had recourse to artifice, and acted weakness much better than he had simulated strength.

“I must have some one’s advice!  I must know how others regard your claim.”

He saw no possibility of restraining her, and it might befall that this lady, intentionally or not, would use her influence on his side.  Those last words signified a doubt in Lilian’s mind.  Was it not pretty certain that any respectable woman, on learning how matters stood, must exclaim against that pretended marriage?  Northway’s experience lay solely among the representatives of English morality, and the frankly vicious; he could hardly imagine a “lady” whose view of the point at issue would admit pleas on Lilian’s behalf.

“If you go there,” he said, “I must be with you.”