lf? for any one
could see what Miss Raeburn was thinking of."

The boy gulped down something like a sob, and tried to give himself time
to be coherent again. Marcella sat like a stone.

"When he heard me say that--'in love with her yourself,' he stopped
dead. I saw that I had made him angry. 'What right have you or any one
else,' he said, very short, 'to ask me such a question?' Then I just
lost my head, and said anything that came handy. I told him everybody
talked about it--which, of course, was rubbish--and at last I said, 'Ask
anybody; ask the Winterbournes, ask Miss Boyce--they all think it as
much as I do.' '_Miss Boyce_!' he said--'Miss Boyce thinks I want to
marry Betty Macdonald?' Then I didn't know what to say--for, of course,
I knew I'd taken your name in vain; and he sat down on the grass beside
a little stream there is in the park, and he didn't speak to me for a
long time--I could see him throwing little stones into the water. And at
last he called me. 'Frank!' he said; and I went up to him. And then--"

The lad seemed to tremble all over. He bent forward and laid his hand on
Marcella's knee, touching her cold ones.

"And then he said, 'I can't understand yet, Frank, how you or anybody
else can have mistaken my friendship for Betty Macdonald. At any rate, I
know there's been no mistake on her part. And if you take my advice,
you'll go and speak to her like a man, with all your heart, and see what
she says. You don't deserve her yet, that I can tell you. As for me'--I
can't describe the look of his face; I only know I wanted to go
away--'you and I will be friends for many years, I hope, so perhaps you
may just understand this, once for all. For me there never has been, and
there never will be, but one woman in the world--to love. And you know,'
he said after a bit, 'or you ought to know, very well, who that woman
is.' And then he got up and walked away. He did not ask me to come, and
I felt I dared not go after him. And then I lay and thought. I
remembered being here; I thought of what I had said to you--of what I
had fancied now and then about--about you. I felt myself a brute all
round; for what right had I to come and tell you what he told me? And
yet, there it was--I had to come. And if it was no good my coming, why,
we needn't say anything about it ever, need we? But--but--just look
here, Miss Boyce; if you--if you could begin over again, and make Aldous
happy, then there'd be a good many other peop