For the face he looked upon was serene, and there was no serenity in
him; rather a confusion of unloosed passions fearful of barrier and
yearning tumultuously for freedom. But, whatever his revolt, the secret
revolt which makes no show in look or movement, he kept his ground
and forced a smile of greeting. If her face was quiet, it was also
lovely;--too lovely, he felt, for a man to leave it, whatever might come
of his lingering.

Nothing in all his life had ever affected him like it. For him there was
no other woman in the past, the present or the future, and, realising
this--taking in to the full what her affection and her trust might be to
him in those fearsome days to come, he so dreaded a rebuff--he, who had
been the courted of women and the admired of men ever since he could
remember,--that he failed to respond to her welcome and the simple
congratulations she felt forced to repeat. He could neither speak the
commonplace, nor listen to it. This was his crucial hour. He must find
support here, or yield hopelessly to the maelstrom in whose whirl he was
caught.

She saw his excitement and faltered back a step--a move which she
regretted the next minute, for he took advantage of it to enter and
close behind him the door which she would never have shut of her own
accord. Then he spoke, abruptly, passionately, but in those golden tones
which no emotion could render other than alluring:

"I am an unhappy man, Miss Scott. I see that my presence here is not
welcome, yet am sure that it would be so if it were not for a prejudice
which your generous nature should be the first to cast aside, in face of
the outspoken confidence of my brother: Oswald. Doris, little Doris, I
love you. I have loved you from the moment of our first meeting. Not to
many men is it given to find his heart so late, and when he does, it is
for his whole life; no second passion can follow it. I know that I am
premature in saying this; that you are not prepared to hear such words
from me and that it might be wiser for me to withhold them, but I must
leave Derby soon, and I cannot go until I know whether there is the
least hope that you will yet lend a light to my career or whether that
career must burn itself to ashes at your feet. Oswald--nay, hear me
out--Oswald lives in his memories; but I must have an active hope--a
tangible expectation--if I am to be the man I was meant to be. Will you,
then, coldly dismiss me, or will you let my whole future li