“A gentleman, asking for Miss Haredale,” said a servant at the door.
“Sir Richard, I suppose,” said Amethyst, standing up. “Well, mother, I’m going down-stairs to accept him—if he asks me. But I’ll take care he knows the worst of my family, and I shall tell him that I don’t yet know the worst of myself.”
She went down-stairs, with the evil power still in her heart. The inward force had come to her, not in love, but in hate. There are inspirations from the land of darkness, and these too can make strong. They find their opportunity in self-despair.
“Nothing and no one will interfere to save me,” she thought.
She opened the drawing-room door, and found herself face to face, not with Sir Richard Grattan, but with Sylvester Riddell.
Chapter Twenty Six.
According to his Light.
Amethyst’s two lovers went out from her presence into the gaslight and the moonlight, and walked through the still busy streets of the West End, hardly exchanging a word with each other.