hose acquaintance he had made here, she would be satisfied with
his new choice which promised him the fullest happiness. Why then a sheet
yet blank and a hesitating hand, when all it had to do was to write?

Who can tell? Man knows little of himself or of the conflicting passions
which sway him this way or that, even when to the outward eye, and
possibly to the inner one as well, action looks easy.

Did he feel, without its reaching the point of knowledge, that this
mother of keenest expectation and highest hope would not be satisfied
with what this charming but undeveloped girl of middle class parentage
would bring him? Or was there, deep down in his own undeveloped nature, a
secret nerve alive to ambitions yet unnamed, to hopes not yet formulated,
which warned him to think well before he spoke the irrevocable word
linking a chain which, though twined with roses, was nevertheless a chain
which nothing on earth should have power to break.

He never sounded his soul for an answer to this question; but when he
rose, the paper was still blank. The letter had not been written.

* * * * *

"I do not like secrecy."

"Only for a little while, Ermentrude. My mother is difficult. I would
prepare her."

"And Uncle!"

"What of Uncle?"

"He made me take an oath to-day."

"An oath?"

"That I would not leave him while he lived."

"And you could do that?"

"I could do nothing else. He's a sick man, Carleton. The doctors shake
their heads when they leave him. He will not live a year."

"A year? But that's an eternity! Can you wait, can I wait a year?"

"He loves me and I owe everything to him. Next week we go to Nice. These
are days of parting for you and me, Carleton."

Parting! What word more cruel. She saw that it shook him, and held her
breath for his promise that she should not be long alone. But it did not
come. He was taking time to think. She hardly understood his doing this.
Surely, his mother must be very difficult and he a most considerate son.
She knew he loved her; perhaps never with a more controlling passion than
at this moment of palpitating silence.

As she smiled, he caught her to his breast.

"We have yet a week," he cried, and left her hurriedly, precipitately.

* * * * *

It was their last ride and they had gone far--too far, Ermentrude
thought, for a day so chilly and a sky so threatening. They had entered
gorges; they had skirt