al from which he so ardently
desired to be set free.

The following day he put his plan into execution. It was early in the
afternoon when he entered the hotel, and going at once to the
reception-room, he sent up his card. He had not long to wait for Miss
Sally. He had scarcely taken two or three turns across the floor ere she
floated into the room with both hands outstretched, an eager smile on
her red lips.

He took one of the outstretched hands, bowed ever it coldly, and hastily
dropped it.

"I was expecting you this afternoon," said Sally, archly, pretending not
to notice his constraint, "and here you are at last."

"Miss Pendleton," he began, stiffly, "would you mind getting your hat
and taking a little stroll with me? I have something to talk over with
you, and I do not wish all those people on the porch, who are listening
to us even now, to hear."

"I would be delighted," answered Sally. "Come on. My hat is right out
there on a chair on the veranda."

He followed her in silence. It was not until they were some little
distance from the hotel that he found voice to speak.

"You say you want to talk to your betrothed," laughed the girl, with a
toss of her yellow curls; "but you have maintained an unbroken silence
for quite a time."

"I have been wondering how to begin speaking of the subject which weighs
so heavily on my mind, and I think the best way is to break right into
it."

"Yes," assented Sally; "so do I."

"It is about our betrothal," he began, brusquely. "I want to ask you a
plain, frank question, Miss Pendleton, and I hope you will be equally as
frank with me; and that is, do you consider what you are pleased to call
your betrothal to me, and which I considered at the time only a girlish
prank, actually binding?"

He stopped short in the wooded path they were treading, and looked her
gravely in the face--a look that forced an answer. She was equal to the
occasion.

"Of course I do, Mr. Gardiner," she cried, with a jolly little laugh
that sounded horrible in his ears. "And wasn't it romantic? Just like
one of those stories one reads in those splendid French novels, I
laughed----"

"Pray be serious, Miss Pendleton," cut in Gardiner, biting his lip
fiercely to keep back an angry retort. "This is not a subject for
merriment, I assure you, and I had hoped to have a sensible conversation
with you concerning it--to show each of us a way out of it, if that is
possible."

"I do not wish to be s