and the Farther East; but he seemed quite what I might call
uncanny. Still, that's not the point, although possibly it may have had
something to do with it."

He hesitated again. She looked at him with a sideway glance, and said,
almost in a whisper: "Yes?"

The moonlight was bright enough for him to see the notes of
interrogation in her eyes, and he took the plunge.

"Miss Marmion, I once told you that I loved you and wanted you for my
wife, and--and the real fact is that it--I mean I know now that it
wasn't true--and so I thought I ought to tell you. You know, of course,
that the Professor----"

"My dear Lord Leighton," she answered, with an air of quite superior
wisdom, "my learned father is a very clever man in his own subjects: but
I think I know a great deal more about this particular one than he does.
You are quite right. You did not love me. You liked me very much, I have
no doubt----"

"Yes, and so I do still, and always shall do, but----"

"But your liking was great enough to make you mistake it for love.
Women's instincts are quicker and keener in these relations than men's
are, and I saw that you did not love me as a real woman has to be loved,
and, to be quite frank with you, some one else did. I like you very
much, Lord Leighton, and I am going to go on liking you; but, you see, I
could not give you what I had already given away. Now, you have told me
so much that you ought to tell me a little more. How did your sudden
enlightenment on that interesting subject come about?"

He was infinitely relieved by the absolutely frank and friendly way in
which she had treated the whole subject, and so he had courage to reply
with a laugh:

"In short, Miss Marmion, you ask me who the other girl is. Well, you
certainly have a right to know, because, curiously enough, I might never
have got to know her but for you----"

"Is it Brenda?"

The question was whispered, and he replied in a whisper:

"Yes; do you think I have any chance?"

A cohort of wild cats would not have torn Brenda's secret out of her
friend's soul, and so she replied in a tone that was almost judicious in
its evenness:

"That, my friend, is a question that you can only get answered by asking
another--and you must ask her, not me."

"Oh yes, of course I must," he said rather limply. "But she's so
splendid--so beautiful, so exquisite--and--I do wish she wasn't so very
rich. You see, even if I had the great good fortune to--to get her to