attuned by Time the Cynic to the very note of some
selfish policy which in earlier days they despised.

The hour of appointment came, and with it a crisis; and with the crisis
a collapse.

'God forgive me--I can't meet Stephen!' she exclaimed to herself. 'I
don't love him less, but I love Mr. Knight more!'

Yes: she would save herself from a man not fit for her--in spite of
vows. She would obey her father, and have no more to do with Stephen
Smith. Thus the fickle resolve showed signs of assuming the complexion
of a virtue.

The following days were passed without any definite avowal from Knight's
lips. Such solitary walks and scenes as that witnessed by Smith in the
summer-house were frequent, but he courted her so intangibly that to any
but such a delicate perception as Elfride's it would have appeared no
courtship at all. The time now really began to be sweet with her. She
dismissed the sense of sin in her past actions, and was automatic in
the intoxication of the moment. The fact that Knight made no actual
declaration was no drawback. Knowing since the betrayal of his
sentiments that love for her really existed, she preferred it for the
present in its form of essence, and was willing to avoid for awhile the
grosser medium of words. Their feelings having been forced to a rather
premature demonstration, a reaction was indulged in by both.

But no sooner had she got rid of her troubled conscience on the matter
of faithlessness than a new anxiety confronted her. It was lest Knight
should accidentally meet Stephen in the parish, and that herself should
be the subject of discourse.

Elfride, learning Knight more thoroughly, perceived that, far from
having a notion of Stephen's precedence, he had no idea that she had
ever been wooed before by anybody. On ordinary occasions she had a
tongue so frank as to show her whole mind, and a mind so straightforward
as to reveal her heart to its innermost shrine. But the time for a
change had come. She never alluded to even a knowledge of Knight's
friend. When women are secret they are secret indeed; and more often
than not they only begin to be secret with the advent of a second lover.

The elopement was now a spectre worse than the first, and, like the
Spirit in Glenfinlas, it waxed taller with every attempt to lay it.
Her natural honesty invited her to confide in Knight, and trust to his
generosity for forgiveness: she knew also that as mere policy it would
be better to tel