She awoke with a start.  It was quite dark; the first stars burned with steadily growing brilliancy.  Some one was standing above her, looking down at her.  She could see only the vague outline——­

“Gloria——­”

A little cry of fear broke from her.

“Gloria,” pleaded Gratton.  “Don’t you know I wouldn’t——?”

“I’ll be down in a minute,” she told him, drawing as far away as she could, speaking with nervous haste.  “Go down, please.  Wait for me.”

“The justice is downstairs,” he said, his own voice agitated despite his effort for mastery.  “Are you ready?”

“Yes, yes!  In a minute I’ll be down.  Go.  Please go.”

He hesitated; she could have screamed at him.  But presently he began withdrawing.  Slowly, hideously slowly——­

“When you are ready.  And—­he has a long ride back, Gloria.  We should not keep him waiting.”

She watched until he had gone.  Then she crouched, staring with wide, unseeing eyes into the outside dark.  The man would go right away; she would not have even him to mitigate the horrible condition of aloneness with Gratton.

“I won’t marry him!” she cried out.  “I won’t.  I hate him.  He is a beast, and—­I won’t!”

There was, after all, nothing to force her.  Nothing—­save that she had been away all this time with Gratton, that he had bought clothing for her, that he had registered himself and wife. And the newspapers!  She heard a door slam and sprang up; if the justice went away now without marrying them!  She would marry him; why, if he had been of a notion to demur she would have made him marry her!

“I can’t think clearly.  I wonder if I am insane?” She went with heavy, leaden steps back to her room.  A pale, weary face looked at her from her glass.  She began arranging her hair.  Her fingers, with wills of their own, refused to obey her own command laid upon them.  She sought wildly to delay, delay to the last fragment of the last second before yielding to the inevitable; she wanted to loiter over her hair, and her fingers raced.  She could hear voices downstairs.  Gratton’s voice, low and urgent; a thin, querulous voice; she shuddered.  That would be the justice.  Another voice, a man’s and strange to her.  He said nothing, but twice she heard him laugh, a laugh that jarred upon her nerves.  She guessed who he would be; the man Gratton had sent to bring the justice.

“Gloria!” Gratton was calling from the foot of the steps.

The voice that answered for her was clear and steady and, downstairs, must have sounded untroubled: 

“I’m coming.  Just a minute.”

* * * * *

Two hours ago, while Gloria had been watching the shadows creeping among the pines, Mark King had arrived.  He had come down the ridge from the rear and thus to the outbuilding by the stable which housed the caretaker, old Jim Spalding.