thought any woman would have taken pity on a man in the first sharpness
of his misfortune, and have spared him her reproaches. Maud has been an
angel of kindness, but you have had no thought of my sufferings."

Lilias gave a gasp of mingled anger and mortification. This was what
she had feared, this was what she had determined to avoid; but once
again Fate had been too strong for her, and had precipitated the
calamity before she had had time to obtain her freedom. Now every one
would call her heartless and unwomanly; her parents would look coldly
upon her, she would be branded before the neighbourhood as a girl who
had forsaken her love when he most needed her devotion. A great wave of
anger swept over her, her heart thumped against her side, and her breath
came fast. She hardly knew what she was saying, but the words rushed
out in a breathless string--

"Oh yes, Maud--Maud! Always Maud! I'm sick of hearing Maud quoted, and
held up as a pattern! Maud is always right, and I am wrong. Maud is an
angel, and I am an unwomanly wretch! Why didn't you get engaged to
Maud, when you liked her so much better than me? If I have made a
mistake, so have you, and you have no right to reproach me. I'll go
away and leave you, since I make you so unhappy, and you prefer Maud's
company to mine."

She was out of the room even as the last word was uttered, and the two
who were left stared at each other with horrified eyes. Maud's face was
crimson, from the tip of her chin to the roots of her hair, but she was
the first to speak and recover some semblance of composure.

"Oh, don't listen to her! Don't listen to her! She does not know what
she is saying. She is excited, and has lost her self-control. In a few
minutes she will be sorry. Oh yes, I know she will; she will be
wretched, and come to beg you to forgive her. Wait, wait, and don't
judge her hardly. She is so young, as you said, and she didn't know
what she was saying. Try to forget it."

But Ned sank down in a chair and covered his face with his hands.

"But it is true!" he moaned. "It is true, and I can't deny it! Oh, how
blind I have been--how blind and foolish! I have ruined my own life as
well as hers."

CHAPTER TWENTY SIX.

A MILESTONE.

It was all over. Ned had gone away, and the diamond ring no longer
shone on Lilias's left hand. In a storm of tears and sobs she had
declared to her mother that she neither could nor would keep true to her