uel you can be."

"Have I done anything to interfere with you? Have I said a word even
to that young lad, when I might have said a word? Yes; to him I did
say something; but I waited, and would not say it, while a word could
hurt you. Shall I tell you what I told him? Just everything that has
ever happened between you and me."

"You did?"

"Yes;--because I saw that I could trust him. I told him because I
wanted him to be quite sure that I had never loved him. But, Frank,
I have put no spoke in your wheel. There has not been a moment since
you told me of your love for this rich young lady in which I would
not have helped you had help been in my power. Whomever I may have
harmed, I have never harmed you."

"Am I not as clear from blame towards you?"

"No, Frank. You have done me the terrible evil of ceasing to love
me."

"It was at your own bidding."

"Certainly! but if I were to bid you to cut my throat, would you do
it?"

"Was it not you who decided that we could not wait for each other?"

"And should it not have been for you to decide that you would wait?"

"You also would have married."

"It almost angers me that you should not see the difference. A girl
unless she marries becomes nothing, as I have become nothing now. A
man does not want a pillar on which to lean. A man, when he has done
as you had done with me, and made a girl's heart all his own, even
though his own heart had been flexible and plastic as yours is,
should have been true to her, at least for a while. Did it never
occur to you that you owed something to me?"

"I have always owed you very much."

"There should have been some touch of chivalry if not of love to make
you feel that a second passion should have been postponed for a year
or two. You could wait without growing old. You might have allowed
yourself a little space to dwell--I was going to say on the sweetness
of your memories. But they were not sweet, Frank; they were not sweet
to you."

"These rebukes, Mabel, will rob them of their sweetness,--for a
time."

"It is gone; all gone," she said, shaking her head,--"gone from me
because I have been so easily deserted; gone from you because the
change has been so easy to you. How long was it, Frank, after you had
left me before you were basking happily in the smiles of Lady Mary
Palliser?"

"It was not very long, as months go."

"Say days, Frank."

"I have to defend myself, and I will do so with truth. It was not
very long,