“The next summer I went over to Sweden again.  Miss Allen was still with the Beckets, as I knew; but she was only going to stay a few months more.  One of the children had died, and the other two were to be sent to a boarding-school in England.  Again I went through the proposing ordeal, and again it was useless.  ‘Confound it!’ I shouted, ’do deal honestly with me!  What’s the matter?  Are you engaged already?’ She kept silent for a long time, then said ‘Yes!’ ’Then why in the name of the Jotuns didn’t you tell me so before?’ I was brutal (as I often am), and the poor girl began to cry.  Then there was a scene—­positive stage business.  I wouldn’t take her refusal.  ’This other man, you don’t really care for him—­ you are going to sacrifice yourself!  I won’t have it!  She wept and moaned, and threatened hysterics; and at last, when I was losing patience (I can’t stand women’s idiotic way of flinging themselves about and making a disturbance, instead of discussing difficulties calmly), she said at last that, if ever we met in England, she would explain her position.  ‘Why not now?’—­no, not in the Beckets’ house.  Very well then, at least she might make it certain that I should see her in England.  After trouble enough, she at last consented to this.  She was to come back with Mr. Becket and the boys, and then go to her people.  I got her promise that she would write to me and make an appointment somewhere or other.—­More whisky?”

Glazzard declined; so Denzil replenished his own glass, and went on.  He was now tremulous with the excitement of his reminiscences; he fidgeted on the chair, and his narrative became more jerky than ever.

“Her letter came, posted in London.  She had taken leave of the Becket party, and was supposed to be travelling homewards; but she would keep her word with me.  I was to go and see her at an hotel in the West End.  Go, I did, punctually enough; I believe I would have gone to Yokohama for half an hour of her society.  I found her in a private sitting-room, looking wretched enough, confoundedly ill.  And then and there she told me her story.  It was a queer one; no one could have guessed it.”

He seized the poker and stirred the fire savagely.

“I shall just give you the plain facts.  Her father was a builder in a small way, living at Bristol.  He had made a little money, and was able to give his children a decent education.  There was a son, who died young, and then two girls, Lilian the elder of them.  The old man must have been rather eccentric; he brought up the girls very strictly (their mother died when they were children)—­would scarcely let them go out of his sight, preached to them a sort of mixture of Christianity and Pantheism, forbade all pleasures except those of home, didn’t like them to make acquaintances.  Their mother’s sister kept the house; a feeble, very pious creature, probably knowing as much about life as the cat or the canary—­so Lilian describes her.  The man came to a sudden end; a brick fell on his head whilst he was going over a new building.  Lilian was then about fifteen.  She had passed the Oxford Local, and was preparing herself to teach—­or rather, being prepared at a good school.