u, when you can hear
all that I can tell you of my hopes, my dreams, my aspirations----"

"I do not want to hear," said Lesley, putting out her hand blindly.
"Please do not tell me: it makes me miserable--indeed, I must not
listen."

Again Maurice stood silent for a moment.

"_Must_ not listen?" he repeated at length, with a keen look at her.
"Why must you not?"

Lesley made no answer.

"You speak strangely," said Kenyon, with some slight coldness beginning
to manifest itself in his manner. "Why should you not listen to me? If
you are thinking of your father, I can assure you that he has no
objection to me. I have consulted him already. He would be honestly
glad, I believe, if you could care for me--he has told me so. Does his
opinion go for nothing?"

She shook her head.

"I can't explain," she said brokenly. "I can only ask you not to say
anything--at least--I have promised----"

"Promised not to listen to me?"

"To anything of the kind," said Lesley, feeling that she was making a
terrible mess of the whole affair, and yet unable to loosen her tongue
sufficiently to explain.

"May I ask to whom you gave this promise?"

"No," said Lesley.

There was another silence, but this time it was a silence charged with
ominous significance. Maurice's face was very white, and a peculiar
rigidity showed itself in the lines of his features. He was very much
disappointed, and he also felt that he had some right to be displeased.

"If you were bound by any such promise, Miss Brooke," he said, "I think
it would have been better that your friends should have known of it. I
don't think that Mr. Brooke was aware----"

"Oh, no, he knew nothing about it."

"It was a promise made before you came here?"

"Yes."

"Of which your mother--Lady Alice--approves?"

"Oh, yes--it was to her--because she----"

Lesley stammered and tried to explain. There was a tremendous oppression
upon her, such as one feels sometimes in a nightmare dream. She longed
to speak out, to clear herself in Maurice's eyes, and yet she could not
frame a single intelligible sentence. It was as though she were
afflicted with dumbness.

"I think," said Maurice, deliberately, "that your father and your aunt
had a right to know this fact. You seem to have kept them in ignorance
of it. And I have been led into a mistake. I can assure you, Miss
Brooke, that if I had been aware of any previous promise--or--or
engagement of yours, I should never have presu