g round her, entering her
heart, filling her whole being, a delicious and marvellous ecstasy. The
pain and the trouble vanished. The treachery, the deceit, and the fall
she had undergone were forgotten. She only knew that, if Trevor loved
her, she loved him. She was about to speak when her eyes fell for a
moment on a page of the manuscript she had just written. Like a flash,
memory came back.

It stung her cruelly as a serpent might sting. She sprang to her feet;
she flung down his hand.

"You don't know whom you are talking to. If you knew me just as I am,
you would unsay all those words; and, Mr. Trevor, you can never know me
as I am, never, and I can never marry you."

"But do you love me? That is the point," said Trevor.

"I--do not ask me. No--if you must know. How can I love anybody? I am
incapable of love. Oh, go, go! do go! I don't love you: of course I
don't. Don't think of me again. I am not for you. Try and love Kitty,
and make Mrs. Aylmer happy. Go; do leave me! I am unworthy of you,
absolutely, utterly."

"But if I think differently?" said Trevor. He was very much troubled by
her words; she spoke with such vehemence, and alluded to such
extraordinary and to him impossible things, that he failed to understand
her; then he said slowly: "You are stunned and surprised, but, darling,
I am willing to wait, and my heart is yours. A man cannot take back his
heart after he has given it, even though a woman does scorn it. But you
won't be cruel to me; I cannot believe it, Florence. I will come again
to-morrow and see you."

He turned without speaking to her again and left the room.

Florence never knew how she spent the rest of that day; but she had a
dim memory afterwards that she worked harder during the succeeding hours
than she had ever worked in her life before. Her brain was absolutely
stimulated by what she had gone through, and she felt almost inclined to
venture to write that Sunday-school paper which Tom Franks had so much
desired.

She was to go out that evening with the Franks. She was now, although
the London season had by no means begun, a little bit in request in
certain literary circles; and Tom Franks, who had taken her in tow, was
anxious to bring her as much forward as possible.

Edith and Tom were going to drive to a certain house in the suburbs
where a literary lady, a Mrs. Simpson, a very fashionable woman, lived.
Florence was to be the lioness of the evening, and Edith came in early