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t not only branded her--it seared the innocent! Poor, poor Yate! What had he done that a suffering girl should have clung to him to avert mental death in an ocean of despond, while he had imagined it but a dancing duet on the waves of love? And she had aided the deception. It had been to gain time, to kill regret, to help in wrenching the weeds she had mistaken for flowers from the garden of her life. Well, she had failed, and the travesty must cease. But before it ceased that which she had striven to do as a duty to herself she would now do as a duty to Yate. She chose paper and a pen with deliberation, and wrote very proportionately and legibly:-- DEAR MR. ROSSER,--Pray do not consider yourself bound to return as you suggested, and resume our childish relations. Your long silence has proved you now know your own mind, and I have already found someone worthy of a woman's esteem and affection.--Your sincere friend, CAROL SILVER. She reserved the posting till night, after the coming of Yate, who was due at dinner. In the evening the young man arrived. He had fought his way on foot through a deluge of rain and a thundering blast. The tussle suited his mood, which had rebelled against the suavity of conveyance to his enchanting goal. A handsome colour glowed through the tan of his cheeks, and the sombre green-grey of his eyes shone gallant and golden with the illuminations of love. At first glimpse of him Carol recognised in his personality that almost godlike quality which welds mere dust into heroes. What devotion he was prepared to give her! A crown of sovereignty to lift the chosen one above princes and peoples, pain and penury, and privation. But the diadem was too large, too massive; her poor ignoble head might sink under it. And then princes and peoples would become but a mob, antagonistic or inane, and the pinch of pain, privation, and penury would eternally grip at the strings of her love-famished heart. She showed him her renouncement of Rosser, and sent it forth to post. His heart bounded, for her composure deceived him and masked the cost of the decisive action. After dinner, Mrs Silver, complaining of the elements outside and the leaden temperature within, retired to lie down in the adjacent boudoir. They were alone. On a distant pedestal a lamp, petalled like a poppy, threw sleepy rays across the room; at the piano some smal
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