Holding by the table, she came close to him and laid her hand on his arm.
"Do you refuse to marry me ?" she asked.
He saw the vile opportunity, and said the vile words.
"You're married already to Arnold Brinkworth." Without a cry to warn him, without an effort to save herself, she dropped senseless at his feet; as her mother had dropped at his father's feet in the by-gone time.
He disentangled himself from the folds of her dress.

"Done!" he said, looking down at her as she lay on the floor.
As the word fell from his lips he was startled by a sound in the inner part of the house.

One of the library doors had not been completely closed.

Light footsteps were audible, advancing rapidly across the hall.
He turned and fled, leaving the library, as he had entered it, by the open window at the lower end of the room..