m night seemed to thrill with the eloquent voice of the speaker.

"Speak to me," he said, at length. "How coldly you listen! Beatrice,
there is no love, no joy in your face. Tell me you are pleased to see
me--tell me you have remembered me. Say anything let me hear your
voice."

"Hugh," she answered, gently, drawing her hands from his strong grasp,
"this is all a mistake. You have not given me time to speak. I am
pleased to see you well and safe. I am pleased that you have escaped
the dangers of the deep; but I can not say more. I--I do not love you
as you love me."

His hands dropped nervously, and he turned his despairing face from her.

"You must be reasonable," she continued, in her musical, pitiless
voice. "Hugh, I was only a dreaming, innocent, ignorant child when I
first met you. It was not love I thought of. You talked to me as no
one else ever had--it was like reading a strange, wonderful story; my
head was filled with romance, my heart was not filled with love."

"But," he said, hoarsely, "you promised to be my wife."

"I remember," she acknowledged. "I do not deny it; but, Hugh, I did
not know what I was saying. I spoke without thought. I no more
realized what the words meant than I can understand now what the wind
is saying."

A long, low moan came from his lips; the awful despair in his face
startled her.

"So I have returned for this!" he cried. "I have braved untold perils;
I have escaped the dangers of the seas, the death that lurks in heaving
waters, to be slain by cruel words from the girl I loved and trusted."

He turned from her, unable to check the bitter sob that rose to his
lips.

"Hush, Hugh," she said, gently, "you grieve me."

"Do you think of my grief?" he cried. "I came here tonight, with my
heart on fire with love, my brain dizzy with happiness. You have
killed me, Beatrice Earle, as surely as ever man was slain."

Far off, among the trees, she saw the glimmer of the light in Lord
Airlie's room. It struck her with a sensation of fear, as though he
were watching her.

"Let us walk on," she said; "I do not like standing here."

They went through the shrubbery, through the broad, green glades of the
park, where the dew drops shone upon fern leaves and thick grass, past
the long avenue of chestnut trees, where the wind moaned like a human
being in deadly pain; on to the shore of the deep, calm lake, where the
green reeds bent and swayed and the moonlight shone on