that you were in no humor for company. To deny you, therefore, to
another visitor, seemed to me rather officious, but still pardonable.
You will consider that I was wholly ignorant of your relations to that
visitor; that whatever you may have done for others, Gertrude, to me you
never vouchsafed a word of information on the subject, and that Mr.
Clare's words are a revelation to me. But I am bound to believe nothing
that he says. I am bound to believe that I have injured you only when I
hear it from your own lips."

Richard made a movement as if to break out upon the Major; but Gertrude,
who had been standing motionless with her eyes upon the ground, quickly
raised them, and gave him a look of imperious prohibition. She had
listened, and she had chosen. She turned to Luttrel. "Major Luttrel,"
she said, "you _have_ been an accessory in what has been for me a
serious grief. It is my duty to tell you so. I mean, of course, a
profoundly unwilling accessory. I pity you more than I can tell you. I
think your position more pitiable than mine. It is true that I never
made a confidant of you. I never made one of Richard. I had a secret,
and he surprised it. You were less fortunate." It might have seemed to a
thoroughly dispassionate observer that in these last four words there
was an infinitesimal touch of tragic irony. Gertrude paused a moment
while Luttrel eyed her intently, and Richard, from a somewhat tardy
instinct of delicacy, walked over to the bow-window. "This is the most
painful moment of my life," she resumed. "I hardly know where my duty
lies. The only thing that is plain to me is, that I must ask you to
release me from my engagement. I ask it most humbly, Major Luttrel,"
Gertrude continued, with warmth in her words, and a chilling coldness in
her voice,--a coldness which it sickened her to feel there, but which
she was unable to dispel. "I can't expect that you should give me up
easily; I know that it's a great deal to ask, and"--she forced the
chosen words out of her mouth--"I should thank you more than I can say
if you would put some condition upon my release. You have done honorably
by me, and I repay you with ingratitude. But I can't marry you." Her
voice began to melt. "I have been false from the beginning. I have no
heart to give you. I should make you a despicable wife."

The Major, too, had listened and chosen, and in this trying conjuncture
he set the seal to his character as an accomplished man. He saw tha