?"

"Your forehead is thunder, Percy. I know that look."

"Margaret, I think I could bear to see our army suffer another defeat
rather than you should be contemptible."

"Your chastisement is not given in half measures, Percy."

"Speak on," said he; "there is more to come. You are engaged to marry
him?"

"I engaged that I would take the name of Blancove."

"If he would cease to persecute Rhoda Fleming!"

"The stipulation was exactly in those words."

"You mean to carry it out?"

"To be sincere? I do, Percy!

"You mean to marry Algernon Blancove?"

"I should be contemptible indeed if I did, Percy!

"You do not?"

"I do not."

"And you are sincere? By all the powers of earth and heaven, there's no
madness like dealing with an animated enigma! What is it you do mean?"

"As I said--to be sincere. But I was also bound to be of service to your
friend. It is easy to be sincere and passive."

Percy struck his brows. "Can you mean that Edward Blancove is the man?"

"Oh! no. Edward will never marry any one. I do him the justice to say
that his vice is not that of unfaithfulness. He had but one love, and
her heart is quite dead. There is no marriage for him--she refuses. You
may not understand the why of that, but women will. She would marry him
if she could bring herself to it;--the truth is, he killed her pride.
Her taste for life has gone. She is bent on her sister's marrying your
friend. She has no other thought of marriage, and never will have. I
know the state. It is not much unlike mine."

Waring fixed her eyes. "There is a man?"

"Yes," she answered bluntly.

"It is somebody, then, whose banker's account is, I hope, satisfactory."

"Yes, Percy;" she looked eagerly forward, as thanking him for releasing
her from a difficulty. "You still can use the whip, but I do not feel
the sting. I marry a banker's account. Do you bear in mind the day I
sent after you in the park? I had just heard that I was ruined. You know
my mania for betting. I heard it, and knew when I let my heart warm to
you that I could never marry you. That is one reason, perhaps, why I
have been an enigma. I am sincere in telling Algy I shall take the name
of Blancove. I marry the banker. Now take this old gift of yours."

Percy grasped the handkerchief, and quitted her presence forthwith,
feeling that he had swallowed a dose of the sex to serve him for a
lifetime. Yet he lived to reflect on her having decided practically,
perhaps wi