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Rh a gloomy and brooding look. When he directed his attention upon any one, it was upon Rachel. The prolonged gaze which he occasionally fixed upon her was one of evil scrutiny, which stirred her usually cool blood not a little. She never failed, however, to meet it with composure. At last she did a daring thing. Under cover of a conversation between her father and Saint Méran, she went to the table at his side and began to turn over the books upon it.

"I think," she said, in an undertone, "that you have something to say to me."

"Aye," he answered, "I have that, and the time 'll come when I shall say it, too."

"You think I'm afraid to hear it," she continued. "Follow me into the next room and see."

Then she addressed her father, speaking aloud.

"Your plans for the new bank are in the next room, I believe," she said. "I wish to show them to Mr. Haworth."

"Y—yes," he admitted, somewhat reluctantly. "They are on my table."

She passed through the folding doors and Haworth followed her. She stopped at one of the windows and waited for him to speak, and it was during this moment in which she waited that he saw in her face what he had not seen before—a faint pallor and a change which was not so much a real change as the foreshadowing of one to come. He saw it now because it chanced that the light struck full upon her.

"Now," she said, "say your say. But let me tell you that I shall listen not because I feel a shadow of interest in it, but because I know you thought I shrank from hearing it."