you could afford at the price. Well, I don't want to hurt your
feelings--your _very_ best, then. And yet it seems very odd--you were
so confident at first. Of course if the thing's really gone, and
there's no chance left, it's folly to think about it. But what a
future to lose--what a future to lose! Mr. Ryfe, I can't stay with
Aunt Agatha--I can't and I won't! How she could ever find anybody to
marry her! Mr. Ryfe, speak to me. What had I better do?"

Tom would have given a round sum of money at that moment to recall one
of the many imaginary conversations held with Miss Bruce, in which
he had exhausted poetry, sentiment, and forensic ardour for the
successful pleading of his suit. Now he could find nothing better to
say than that "he had hoped she was comfortable with Mrs. Stanmore;
and anybody who didn't make Miss Bruce comfortable must be brutal
and wicked. But--but--if it was really so--and she could be
persuaded--why, Miss Bruce must long have known----" And here
the voice of Tom, the plausible, the prudent, the self-reliant,
degenerated to a husky whisper, because he felt that his very heart
was mounting to his throat.

Miss Bruce cut him exceedingly short.

"You remember our bargain," she said bitterly. "If you don't, I can
remind you of it. Listen, Mr. Ryfe; I am not going to cheat you out of
your dues. You were to win back my fortune from the next of kin--this
cousin who seems to have law on his side. You charged yourself with
the trouble--that counts for nothing, it is in the way of your
business--with the costs--the expenses--I don't know what you call
them--these were to be paid out of the estate. It was all plain
sailing, if we had conquered; and there was an alternative in the