but a winter gleam after all; the rose-bloom of her cheek changed to
deadly pallor. Big man as he was, he grew giddy as he looked. He knew at
once the magnitude of his vanity and his mistake, and cursed himself for
having spoken.

"Doctor Danby, I--I--you do me honour. I thank you very much, but oh!
why did you spoil our friendship with such folly?"

"Folly? To love you? I have never done a wiser thing in my life!"

"Pray do not speak of love. You know--you must know--that word to me is
dead for ever!"

"But some day, in the future, you might----"

"My future, Doctor Danby, belongs to my child. I shall never allow any
interest to come before my love for her. Will you understand this, and
forgive and forget to-day as though it had never been?"

He was not a really vain man, or her frigid words, her rejection of his
love, would have sent him from the house angered and mortified, never to
return. But he was large-souled and childishly tender of heart, and
thought, even in his disappointment, that, in her unprotected state, she
might at times have need of him.

Because his demand had exceeded his deserts, and because he had received
a merited snub for his rashness, there was no reason, he argued, that
she should be deprived the right of using him as her friend.

He smiled a sickly assent and extended his hand.

"Good-bye, and I may come and see you sometimes still? It is not as if
there were anyone else----"

Mrs Cameron interrupted hurriedly.

"Please do, and we will never reopen this subject again!"

"Never again!" swore poor Danby as he left the house--and he meant it.

In his own sanctum he conned over every speech of hers and found the
interview had been bald to desolation. Not one green blade of sympathy
even had she given to cheer the dreary wilderness of his life. She had
wished to keep him as her friend, certainly; but that in itself was a
dubious compliment. Had she cared for him ever so little, and felt bound
by duty for her child's sake to sacrifice love, she would have avoided
painful chances of meeting.

"She has evidently no fear of falling in love with me," groaned Ralph to
himself. "I am not even sufficiently interesting to be dangerous."

This rankled for some time. He continued on his daily rounds,
endeavouring, if possible, to avoid passing through the street in which
his frosty idol dwelt. With dreary, lustreless eyes he received the
blandishments of the feminine throng which had elevat