“Presently,” Juliet said again.

She realized as she descended the stairs that her heart was beating uncomfortably hard, but she did not pause on that account.  She wanted to face the squire while her spirit was still high.

She held her head up as she entered the library where he awaited her, but she knew within herself that it was bravado rather than fearlessness that enabled her to face him thus.  And when he turned sharply from the window to meet her she was conscious of a moment of most undignified dread.

Whether her face betrayed her or not she never knew but she was aware in an instant of a change in his attitude.  He came straight up to her, and suddenly her hand was in his and he was looking into her eyes with the gleam of a smile in his own.

“Come along!” he said.  “Let’s have it!  I’m the biggest brute you ever came across, and you never want to set eyes on me again.  Isn’t that it?”

It was winningly spoken, restoring her self-confidence in a second.  She shook her head in answer.

“No.  I’m not in a position to judge, and I don’t think I want to be.  I have no real liking for meddling in other people’s affairs.”

“Very wise!” he commented.  “But you won’t have much choice if you decide to stay with us.  Are you going to stay?”

“Are you going to keep me?” said Juliet.

“Certainly,” he returned promptly.  “I regard you as the most valuable member of the household at the present moment.  Miss Moore, will you tell me something?”

“If I can,” said Juliet.

“Where did you learn such a lot about men?” he said.

She coloured a little at the question.  “Well, I haven’t lived with my eyes shut all this time,” she said.

“You evidently haven’t,” he said.  “Allow me to compliment you on your tact!  Ninety-nine women out of a hundred would have taken the obvious course of siding with their own sex against the oppressor.  Why didn’t you, I wonder?”

“I’m not sure that I don’t,” she said, smiling faintly.

He pressed her hand and released it.  “No, you don’t.  You’ve too much sense.  You know as well as I do that she deserved all she got and more.  You haven’t always found her exactly easy to get on with yourself, I’ll be bound.”

“I don’t think you are either of you that,” Juliet said quietly.

He nodded.  “Now it’s coming!  I thought it would.  No, Miss Moore, I am not easy to get on with.  I’ve had a rotten life all through, and it hasn’t made me very pliable.”  He paused, looking at her under his black brows as if debating with himself as to how far he would take her into his confidence.  “I’ve been cheated of the best from the very outset,” he said, “cheated and thwarted at every turn.  That sort of treatment may suit some people, but it hasn’t made an archangel of me.”  He fell to pacing up and down the room, staring moodily at the floor, his hands behind him.  “Life is such an infernal gamble at the best,” he said; “but I never had a chance.  It’s been one damn thing after another.  I’ve tripped at every hurdle.  I suppose you never came a cropper in your life—­don’t know what it means.”