Mary had passed through twenty minutes of tense excitement. The risk had been slight, after the first moment of intervention, but she had not known this, and she was still trembling with indignation, a creature all fire and passion, when the door of The Butterflies opened to admit her. Leaving Ben Bosham on the threshold she lost not a moment, but with her story on her lips, hurried up the stairs, and on the landing came plump upon Lord Audley.

From the window he had seen something of what was afoot below. He had recognized Mary and the tattered Bosham, and he had read the riddle, grasped the facts, and cursed the busybody, all within thirty seconds. "D--n it! this passes everything," he had muttered to himself as he turned from the window in disgust. "This is altogether too much!" And he had opened the door--ready also to open his mind to her!

"What in the world is it?" he asked. He held the door for her to enter. "What has happened? I could not believe my eyes when I saw you in company with that wretched creature!" he continued. "And all the tagrag and bobtail in the place behind you? What is it, Mary?"

She felt the check, and the color, which excitement had brought to her cheeks, faded. But she thought that it was only that he did not understand, and, "That wretched creature, as you call him," she cried, "has just escaped from death. They were going to murder him!"

"Murder him?" Audley repeated. He raised his eyebrows. "Murder him?" coldly. "My dear girl, don't be silly! Don't let yourself be carried away. You've lost your head. And, pardon me for saying it, I am afraid have made a fool of yourself! And of me!"

"But they were going to throw him into the canal!" she protested.

"Going to wash him!" he replied cynically. "And a good thing too! It's a pity they left the job undone. The man is a low, pestilent fellow!" he continued severely, "and obnoxious to me and to all decent people. The idea of bringing him, and that pleasant tail, to my house--my dear girl, it's absurd!"

He made no attempt to soften his tone or suppress his annoyance, and she stared at him in astonishment. Yet she still thought, or she strove to think, that he did not understand, and tried to make the facts clear. "But you don't know what they were like," she protested. "You were not there. They had torn the clothes from his back----"

"I can see that."

"And he was so terrified that it was dreadful to see him! They were handling him brutally, horribly! And then I came up and----"

"And lost your head!" he said. "I dare say you thought all this. But do you know anything about elections?"

"No----"

"Have you ever see an election in progress before?"

"No."

"Just so," he replied dryly. "Well, if you had, you would know that brawls of this kind are common things, the commonest of things at such a time, and that sensible people turn their backs on them. You've chosen to turn the farce into a tragedy, and in doing so you've made yourself ridiculous--and me too!"

"If you had seen them," she said, "I do not think you would speak as you are speaking."

"My dear girl," he replied, and shrugged his shoulders, "I have seen many such things, many. But there is one thing I have never seen, and that is a man killed in an election squabble! The whole thing is childish--silly! The least knowledge of the world--"

"Would have saved me from it?"

"Exactly! Would have saved you from it!" he answered austerely. "And me from a very annoying incident! Peers have nothing to do with elections, as you ought to know; and to bring this mob of all sorts to my door as if the matter touched me, is to compromise me. It is past a joke!"

Mary stared. She was trying to place herself. Certainly this was the room in which she had taken tea, and this was the man who had welcomed her, who had hung over her, whose eyes had paid her homage, who had foreseen her least want, who had lapped her in observance. This was the man and this the room, and there was the chair in which good Mrs. Wilkinson had sat and beamed on her.

But there was a change somewhere; and the change was in the man. Could it mean that he, too, had made a mistake and now recognized it? That he, too, had found that he did not love? But in that case this was not the way to confess an error. His tone, his manner, which held no respect for the woman and no softness for the sweetheart, were far from the tone of one in the wrong. On the contrary, they presented a side of him which had been hitherto hidden from her; a phase of the strength that she had admired, which shocked her even while, as deep calls to deep, it roused her pride. She remembered that she was his betrothed, and that he had wooed her, he had chosen her. And on slight provocation he spoke to her in this strain!

She sought the clue, she fancied that she held it, and from this moment she was on her guard. She was quiet, but there was a smouldering fire in her eyes. "Perhaps I was wrong," she said. "I have had little experience of these things. But are not you, on your side, making too much of this? Too much of a very small, a very natural mistake? Isn't it a trifle after all?"

"Not so much of a trifle as you think!" he retorted. "A man in my position has to follow a certain line of conduct. A girl in yours should be careful to guide herself by my views. Instead, out of a foolish sentimentality, you run directly counter to them! It is too late to consider your relation to me when the harm is done, my dear."

"Perhaps we have neither of us considered the relation quite enough?" she said.

"I am not sure that we have." And again, "I am not sure, Mary, that we have," he repeated more soberly.

She knew what he meant now--knew what was in his mind almost as clearly as if, instead of grasping his conclusion, she had been a party to his reasons. And she closed her lips, a spot of color in each cheek. In other circumstances she would have taken on herself a full, nay, the main share, of the blame. She would have been quick to admit that she, too, had made a mistake, and that no harm was done.

But his manner opened her eyes to many things that had been a puzzle to her. Thought is swift, and in a flash her mind had travelled over the whole course of their engagement, had recalled his long absence, the chill of his letters, the infrequency of his visits; and she saw by that light that this was no sudden shift, but an occasion sought and seized. Therefore she would not help him. She at least had been honest, she at least had been in earnest. She had tricked, not him only, but herself!

She closed her lips and waited, therefore. And he, knowing that he had now burned his boats, had to go on. "I am not sure that we did think enough about it?" he said doggedly. "I have suspected for some time that I acted hastily in--in asking you to be my wife, Mary."

"Indeed?" she said.

"Yes. And what has happened to-day, proving that we look at things so differently, has confirmed my suspicion. It has convinced me--" he looked down at his table, avoiding her eyes, but continued firmly--"that we are not suited to one another. The wife of a man, placed as I am, should have an idea of values, a certain reserve, that comes of a knowledge of the world; above all, no sentimental notions such as lead to mistakes like this." He indicated the street by a gesture. "If I was mistaken a while ago in listening to my feelings rather than to my prudence, if I gave you credit for knowledge which you had had no means of gaining, I wronged you, Mary, and I am sorry for it. But I should be doing you a far greater wrong if I remained silent now."

"Do you mean," she asked in a low voice, "that you wish it to be at an end between us? That you wish to--to throw me over?"

He smiled awry. "That is an unpleasant way of putting it, isn't it?" he said. "However, I am in the wrong, and I have no right to quarrel with a word. I do think that to break off our engagement at once is the best and wisest thing for both of us."

"How long have you felt this?" she asked.

"For some time," he replied, measuring his words, "I have been coming slowly--to that conclusion."

"That I am not fitted to be your wife?"

"If you like to put it so."

Then her anger, hitherto kept under, flamed up. "Then what right," she cried, "if that was in your mind, had you to treat me as you treated me at Beaudelays--in the garden? What right had you to kiss me? Rather, what right had you to insult me? For it was an insult--it was an insult, if you were not going to marry me! Don't you know, sir, that it was vile? That it was unforgivable?"

She had never looked more handsome, never more attractive than at this moment. The day was failing, but the glow of the fire fell on her face, and on her eyes sparkling with anger. He took in the picture, he owned her charm, he even came near to repenting. But it was too late, and "It may have been vile--and you may not forgive it," he answered hardily, "but I'd do it again, my dear, on the same provocation!"

"You would----"

"I would do it again," he repeated coolly. "Don't you know that you are handsome enough to turn any man's head? And what is a kiss after all? We are cousins. If you were not such a prude, I would kiss you now?"

She was furiously angry--or she fancied that she was. But it may be that, deep down in her woman's mind, she was not truly angry. And, indeed, how could she be angry when in her heart a little bird was beginning to sing--was telling her that she was free, that presently this cloud would be behind her, and that the sky would be blue? Already the message was making itself heard, already she was finding it hard to keep up appearances, to frown upon him and play her part.

Yet she flashed out at him. Was he not going too fast, was he not riding off too lightly? "Oh!" she cried, "You dare to say that! Even while you break off with me!"

But his selfish, masterful nature had now the upper hand. He had eaten his leek and he was anxious to be done with it. "And what then?" he said. "I believe that you know that I am right. I believe that you know that we are not suited to one another."

"And you think I will let you go at a word?"

"I think you will let me go," he said, "because you are not a fool, Mary. You know as well as I do that you might be 'my lady' at too high a price. I'm not the most manageable of men. I'd make a decent husband, all being well. But I'm not meek and I'd make a very unhandy husband malgrÉ moi."

The threat exasperated her. "I know this at least," she retorted, "that I would not marry you now, if you were twenty times my lord! You have behaved meanly, and I believe falsely! Not to-day! You are speaking the truth to-day. But I believe that from the start you had this in your mind, that you foresaw this, and were careful not to commit yourself too publicly! What I don't understand is why you ever asked me to be your wife--at all?"

"Look in the glass!" he answered impudently.

She put that aside. "But I suppose that you had a reason!" she returned. "That you loved me, that you felt for me anything worthy of the name of love is impossible! For the rest, let me tell you this! If I ever felt thankful for anything I am thankful for the chance that brought me to your house to-day--and brought me to the truth!"

"Anything more to say?" he asked flippantly. The way she was taking it suited him better than if she had wept and appealed. And then she was so confoundedly good-looking in her tantrums!

"Nothing more," she said. "I think that we understand one another now. At any rate, I understand you. Perhaps you will kindly see if I can leave the house without annoyance."

He looked into the street. Dusk had fallen, the lamplighter was going his rounds. Of the crowd that had attended Mary to the house no more than a handful remained; the nipping air, the attractions of free beer, the sound of the muffin-bell, had drawn away the rest. The driver of the gig was moving to and fro, now looking disconsolately at the windows, now beating his fingers on his chest.

"I think you can leave with safety," Audley said with irony. "I will see you downstairs."

"I will not trouble you," she answered.

"But, surely, we may still be friends?"

She looked him in the face. "We need not be enemies," she answered. "And, perhaps, some day I may be able to think more kindly of you. If that day comes I will tell you. Good-bye." She went out without touching his hand. She went down the stairs.

She drove through the dusky, dimly-lighted streets in a kind of dream, seeing all things through a pleasant haze. The bank was closed and to deliver up her papers she had to go into the bank-house. The glimpse she had of the cheerful parlor, of the manager's wife, of his two children playing the Royal Game of Goose at a round table, enchanted her. Presently she was driving again through the darkling streets, passing the Maypole, passing the quaint, low-browed shops, lit only by an oil lamp or a couple of candles. The Audley Arms, the Packhorse, the Portcullis, were all alight and buzzing with the voices of those who fought their battles over again or laid bets on this candidate or that. What the speaker had said to Lawyer Stubbs and what Lawyer Stubbs had said to the speaker, what the "Duke" thought, who would have to pay for the damage, and the odds the stout farmer would give that wheat wouldn't be forty shillings a quarter this day twelvemonth if the Repeal passed--scraps of these and the like poured from the doorways as she drove by.

All fell in delightfully with her mood and filled her with a sense of well-being. Even when the streets lay behind her, and the driver hunched his shoulders to meet the damp night-fog and the dreary stretch that lay beyond the canal-bridge, Mary found the darkness pleasant and the chill no more than bracing. For what were that night, that chill beside the numbing grip from which she had just--oh, thing miraculous!--escaped! Beside the fetters that had been lifted from her within the last hour! O foolish girl, O ineffable idiot, to have ever fancied that she loved that man!

No, for her it was a charming night! The owl that, far away towards the Great House, hooted dolefully above the woods--no nightingale had been more tuneful. Ben Bosham--she laughed, thinking of his plight--blessings on his bare, bald head and his ragged shoulders! The old horse plodding on, with the hill that mounts to the Gatehouse sadly on his mind--he should have oats, if oats there were in the Gatehouse stables! He should have oats in plenty, or what he would if oats failed!

"What do you give him when he's tired?" she asked.

"Well," the driver replied with diplomacy, "times a quart of ale, Miss. He'll take it like a Christian."

"Then a quart of ale he shall have to-night!" she said with a happy laugh. "And you shall have one, too, Simonds."

Her mood held to the end, so that before she was out of her wraps, Mrs. Toft was aware of the change in her. "Why, Miss," she said, "you look like another creature! It isn't the bank, I'll be bound, has put that color in your cheeks!"

"No!" Mary answered, "I've had an adventure, Mrs. Toft. And briefly she told the tale of Ben Bosham's plight and of her gallant rescue. She began herself to see the comic side of it.

"He always was a fool, was Ben!" Mrs. Toft commented. "And that," she continued shrewdly, "was how you come to see his lordship was it, Miss?"

"How did you know I saw him?" Mary asked in surprise. "But you're right, I did." Then, as she entered the parlor, "Perhaps I'd better tell you, Mrs. Toft," she said, "that the engagement between my cousin and myself is at an end. You were one of the very few who knew of it, and so I tell you."

Mrs. Toft showed no surprise. "Indeed, Miss," she answered, stooping to the hearth to light the candles with a piece of wood. "Well, one thing's certain, and many a time my mother's drummed it into me, 'Better a plain shoe than one that pinches!' And again, 'Better live at the bottom of the hill than the top,' she'd say. 'You see less but you believe more.'"

Neither she nor Mary saw Toft. But Toft, who had entered the hall a moment before, was within hearing, and Mary's statement, so coolly received by his wife, had an extraordinary effect on the man-servant. He stood an instant, his lank figure motionless. Then he opened the door beside him, slipped out into the chill and the darkness, and silently, but with extravagant gestures, he broke into a dance, now waving his thin arms in the air, now stooping with his hands locked between his knees. Whether he thus found vent for joy or grief was a secret which he kept to himself.