"Excuse me, Elizabeth, I have not said that I know or suspect anything.

Everybody seems a little uncomfortable, but that is nothing. What is the matter?"

As she did not answer, he turned and looked at her. Her face was pale, but there was a look of indomitable resolve about her which made him flinch from his purpose of maintaining a cold and reserved manner. A sudden fear ran through his heart lest Kitty's warning should be true!

"Elizabeth," he said, quickly and passionately, "forgive me for the way in which I have spoken. I am an ill-tempered brute. It is my anxiety for you that makes me seem so savage. I cannot bear to see you look as you do: it breaks my heart!"

Her lip trembled at this. She would rather that he had preserved his hard, sullen manner: it would have made it more easy for her to tell her story. She locked her hands closely together, and answered in low, hesitating tones:--

"I am not worth your anxiety. I did not mean to be--untrue--to you, Percival. I suffered a great deal before I made up my mind that I had better tell you--everything."

A tear fell down her pale cheek unheeded. Percival rose to his feet.

"I don't think there is much to tell, is there?" he said. "You mean that you wish to give me up, to throw me over? Is that all?"

His words were calm, but the tone of ironical bitterness in which they were uttered cut Elizabeth to the quick. She lifted her head proudly.

"No," she said, "you are wrong. I wish nothing of the kind."

He stood in an attitude of profound attention, waiting for her to explain. His face wore its old, rigid look: the upright line between his brows was very marked indeed. But he would not speak again.

"Percival," she said--and her tone expressed great pain and profound self-abasement--"when I promised to marry you--someday, you will remember that I never said I loved you. I thought that I should learn to love in time. And so I did--but not--not you."

"And who taught you the lesson that I failed to impart?" asked Percival, with the sneer in his voice which she knew and dreaded.

"Don't ask me," she said, painfully. "It is not fair to ask me that. I did not know until it was too late."

"Until he--whoever he was--asked you to marry him, I suppose? Well, when is the ceremony to take place? Do you expect me to dance at the wedding?

Do you think I am going tamely to resign my rights? My God, Elizabeth, is it you who can treat me in this way? Are all women as false as you?"

He struck his foot fiercely against the ground, and walked away from her. When he came back he found her in the same position; white as a statue, with her hands clasped together upon her knee, and her eyes fixed upon the running water.

"Do you think that I am a stone," he said, violently, "that you tell me the story of your falseness so quietly, as if it were a tale that I should like to hear? Do you think that I feel nothing, or do you care so little what I feel? You had better have refused me outright at once than kept me dangling at your feet for a couple of years, only to throw me over at the last!"

"I have not thrown you over," she said, raising her blue-grey eyes steadily to his agitated face. "I wanted to tell you; that was all. If you like to marry me now, knowing the truth, you may do so."

"What!"

"I may have been false to you in heart," she said, the hot blood tinting her cheeks with carnation as she spoke, "but I will not break my word."

"And what did your lover say to that?" he asked, roughly, as he stood before her. "Did he not say that you were as false to him as you were to me? Did he not say that he would come back again and again, and force you to be true, at least, to him? For that is what I should have done in his place."

"Then," Elizabeth said, with a touch of antagonism in her tones, "he was nobler than you."

"Oh, no doubt," said Percival, tossing aside his head. "No doubt he is a finer fellow in every way. Am I to have the pleasure of making his acquaintance?"

His scorn, his intolerance, were rousing her spirit at last. She spoke firmly, with a new light in her eyes, a new self-possession in her manner.

"You are unjust, Percival. I think that you do not understand what I mean to tell you. He accepted my decision, and I shall never see him again. I thought at first that I would not tell you, but let our engagement go on quietly; and then again I thought that it would be unfair to you not to tell you the whole truth. I leave it to you to say what we should do. I have no love to give you--but you knew that from the first. The difference now is that I--I love another."

Her voice sank almost to a whisper as she uttered the last few words, and she covered her face with her hands. Percival's brow cleared a little; the irony disappeared from his lips, the flash of scorn from his eye. He advanced to her side, and stood looking down at her for several minutes before he attempted any answer to her speech.

"You mean to say," he began, in a softer tone, "that you rejected this man because you had given your promise to me?"

"Yes."

"You sent him away?"

"Yes."

"And he knew the reason? Did he know that you loved him, Elizabeth?"

The answer was given reluctantly, after a long pause. "I do not know. I am afraid--he did."

Percival drew a short, impatient breath. "You must forgive me if I was violent just now, Elizabeth. This is very hard to bear."

"I dare not ask your pardon," she murmured, with her face still between her hands.

"Oh, my pardon? That will do you little good," he said, contemptuously.

"The question is--what is to be done? I suppose this man--this lover of yours--is within call, as it were, Elizabeth? You could summon him with your little finger? If I released you from this engagement to me, you could whistle him back to you next day?"

"Oh, no," she said, looking up at him wonderingly. "He is gone away from England. I do not know where he is."

"It is this man Stretton, then?" said Percival, quietly.

A sudden rush of colour to her face assured him that he had guessed the truth. "I always suspected him," he muttered.

"You had no need. He behaved as honourably as possibly. He did not know of my engagement to you."

"Honourably? A penniless adventurer making love to one of the richest women in Scotland!"

"You mistake, Percival. He did not know that I was rich."

"A likely story!"

"You insult him--and me," said Elizabeth, in a very low tone. "If you have no pity, have some respect--for him--if you have none for me." And then she burst into an agony of tears, such as he had never seen her shed before. But he was pitiless still. The wound was very deep: his pain very sharp and keen.

"Have you had any pity for me?" he said. "Why should I pity him? To my mind, he is the most enviable man on earth, because he has your love.

Respect him, when he has stolen from me the thing that I value more than my life! You do not know what you say."

She still wept, and presently he sat down beside her and leaned his head on his hand, looking at her from out of the shadow made by his bent fingers above his eyes.

"Let me understand matters clearly," he said. "You sent him away, and he has gone to America, never to return. Is that it? And you will marry me, although you do not love me, because you have promised to do so, if I ask you? What do you expect me to say?"

She shook her head. She could not speak.

"I am not generous," he went on deliberately. "You have known me long enough to be aware that I am a very selfish man. I will not give you up to Stretton. He is not the right husband for you. He is a man whom you picked up in the streets, without a character, without antecedents, with a history which he dares not tell. So much I gathered from my father. I say nothing about his behaviour in this case; he may have acted well, or he may have acted badly; I have no opinion to give. But you shall never be his wife."

Elizabeth's tears were dried as if by magic. She sat erect, listening with set lips and startled eyes to the fierce energy of his tones.