She listened with averted look.

"And if I confess that I love you," she said at length, in a low voice;
"if I do this, would it not be mockery to learn, when too late, that I
had made a mistake?"

"But, in heaven's name, Lina, what can you mean? Why do you doubt me?
What is there to tell? I could have no secrets--"

Then there rushed to his memory with a force that sent the blood to his
brow and almost took his breath, the conviction that he _had_ a
secret from her--that he _was_ deceiving her--that it was unmanly
to seek her love with a lie on his lips. For a brief season his
engagement had been forgotten, or ignored. He had hugged to his breast
with unreasoning apathy the theory that the present was enough to
consider--that the future must care for itself--that once his promised
wife, Lina Dent should be his if all the world conspired against it. But
now came the hated thought that Evelyn Howard stood between him and the
precious one who had been his day-star since the night when he had
nursed her back to life.

Starting up, he strode back and forth, not noting the pale cheeks and
startled eyes of the girl who watched him in ill-repressed anxiety.

At length, sitting down beside her, he seized her soft fingers with a
grasp of which he was hardly aware. Then instantly relaxing the rigor
of his clasp, he pleaded:

"Let me hold this pure little hand while I confess to you, my only love,
that your clear eyes have read my soul--that I have deceived you--that
I love you beyond all else this world contains; but that the most cruel
fate man ever before suffered, keeps me from you, unless, indeed, your
love will help me to remove the barrier."

And while the young girl listened, with drooping head, he told her of
his hated engagement--of the painful circumstances that had betrayed him
into compliance.

"But I never dreamed of this sort of Nemesis! I could not have been in
my senses to thus barter my freedom forever."

Slowly withdrawing her hand, the girl said, still in the same low tones:

"And you do not love your betrothed?"

"Love her?" he echoed. "I tell you, Lina, I have never even seen her.
Her people have been abroad for an age. She was in New York a few weeks
ago and, I understand, took offense at my continued absence from her
side, and went back to England. This is what she left for me;" and
plunging his hand into his breast pocket he selected from his note-case
a fragrant little billet-doux, formally d