because my face is not burnt, nor
grown much older, and because I can talk and laugh in the same voice
still." (Oh, how it quivered!) "But it would be a wicked mockery in me
to pretend to be the wife you want. Yes, I know you think you do, but
that is just because my looks are so deceitful, and you have kept on
thinking about me; but you must make a fresh beginning."

"You can tell me that," he said, indignantly.

"Because it is not new to me," she said; "the quarter of an hour you
stood by me, with that deadly calm in your white face, was the real
farewell to the young hopeful dream of that bright summer. I wish it was
as calm now."

"I believed you dying then," answered he.

"Do not make me think it would have been better for you if I had been,"
she said, imploringly. "It was as much the end, and I knew it from the
time my recovery stopped short. I would have let you know if I could,
and then you would not have been so much shocked."

"So as to cut me off from you entirely?"

"No, indeed. The thought of seeing you again was too--too overwhelming
to be indulged in; knowing, as I did, that if you were the same to me,
it must be at this sad cost to you," and her eyes filled with tears.

"It is you who make it so, Ermine."

"No; it is the providence that has set me aside from the active work of
life. Pray do not go on, Colin, it is only giving us both useless pain.
You do not know what it costs me to deny you, and I feel that I must. I
know you are only acting on the impulse of generosity. Yes, I will say
so, though you think it is to please yourself," she added, with one of
those smiles that nothing could drive far from her lips, and which made
it infinitely harder to acquiesce in her denial.

"I will make you think so in time," he said. "Then I might tell you, you
had no right to please yourself," she answered, still with the same air
of playfulness; "you have got a brother, you know--and--yes, I hear you
growl; but if he is a poor old broken man out of health, it is the
more reason you should not vex him, nor hamper yourself with a helpless
commodity."

"You are not taking the way to make me forget what my brother has done
for us."

"How do you know that he did not save me from being a strong-minded
military lady! After all, it was absurd to expect people to look
favourably on our liking for one another, and you know they could not be
expected to know that there was real stuff in the affair. If there had