on't, Chris. It is horrid
of you to want to go and leave me when I'm so lonely and haven't got
anybody in the world but you!"

"I don't want to go, Betty; I hate the mere idea of going. I'd give a
thousand pounds, if I could, to stop away. But I can't see that I have
any alternative. Miss Farringdon left it to me, as her trustee, to find
her heir and give up the property to him; and, as a man of honour, I
don't see how I can leave any stone unturned until I have fulfilled the
charge which she laid upon me."

"Oh! Chris, don't go. I can't spare you." And Elisabeth stretched out
two pleading hands toward him.

Christopher turned away from her. "I say, Betty, please don't cry," and
his voice shook; "it makes it so much harder for me; and it is hard
enough as it is--confoundedly hard!"

"Then why do it?"

"Because I must."

"I don't see that; it is pure Quixotism."

"I wish to goodness I could think that; but I can't. It appears to me a
question about which there could not be two opinions."

The tears dried on Elisabeth's lashes. The old feeling of being at war
with Christopher, which had laid dormant for so long, now woke up again
in her heart, and inclined her to defy rather than to plead. If he cared
for duty more than for her, he did not care for her much, she said to
herself; and she was far too proud a woman ever to care for a man--even
in the way of friendship--who obviously did not care for her. Still, she
condescended to further argument.

"If you really liked me and were my friend," she said, "not only
wouldn't you wish to go away and leave me, but you would want me to have
the money, instead of rushing all over the world in order to give it to
some tiresome young man you'd never heard of six months ago."

"Don't you understand that it is just because I like you and am your
friend, that I can't bear you to profit by anything which has a shade of
dishonour connected with it? If I cared for you less I should be less
particular."

"That's nonsense! But your conscience and your sense of honour always
were bugbears, Christopher, and always will be. They bored me as a
child, and they bore me now."

Christopher winced; the nightmare of his life had been the terror of
boring Elisabeth, for he was wise enough to know that a woman may love a
man with whom she is angry, but never one by whom she is bored.

"It is just like you," Elisabeth continued, tossing her head, "to be so
busy saving your own soul and l