"As I say, I beg the favor of speaking to Miss Heth a few
moments--privately. Of course I shouldn't venture to trespass so, if the
matter weren't vitally important--"
"Who are you?" demanded the great young man with rather more impatience
than seemed necessary. "And what do you wish to speak to her about?
Speak plainly, I beg, and be brief!"
The two men stood facing each other in the faint light. Ten feet of
summer-house floor was between them, yet something in their position was
indefinably suggestive of a conflict.
"I should explain," said the intruder, dim in the doorway, "that
I come as a friend of poor Dalhousie--the boy who got into all
the trouble ... Ah...."
The involuntary ejaculation, briefly arresting his speech, was his
perfect tribute to the girl's beauty now suddenly revealed to him. For
Carlisle had unconsciously leaned forward out of the shadows of the
bench just then, a cold hand laid along her heart.
"This afternoon," the man recovered, with a somewhat embarrassed rush.
"I--I appreciate, I needn't say, that it seems a great liberty, to--"
"Liberty is scarcely the word," said Hugo Canning, fighting the lady's
battle with lordly assurance. "Miss Heth declines to hear...."
But the stranger's vivid voice bore him down: "_Do you, Miss Heth?_...
The situation is terribly serious, you see. I don't want to alarm you
unnecessarily, but--I--I'm afraid he may take matters into his
own hands--"
Canning took an impatient step forward.
"Nevertheless, it's pure impudence for him to send to this lady,
sneaking for favors now. Let's--"
"Mr. Canning, I--I'm afraid I _ought_ to speak to him!"
"_What?_" said Mr. Canning, wheeling at the voice, as if stung.
"_Oh!... That's kind of you!_"
Carlisle felt, under Mr. Canning's incredulous gaze, that this sudden
upwhirl of misfortune was the further refinement of cruelty. She hardly
knew what to do. Scarcely thinkable as it was to dismiss Hugo Canning
from her presence, it seemed even more impossible to pack off this
nameless intruder. Inconceivable malignity of chance, indeed! Only one
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