se of invalids. They had become very intimate, but Edith Brownlow
had almost determined that Walter Marrable did not intend to fall in
love with her. She had quite determined that she would not fall in
love with him till he did. What she might do in that case she had not
told herself. She was not quite sure. He was very nice,--but she was
not quite sure. One ought to be very fond of a young man, she said
to herself, before one falls in love with him. Nevertheless her mind
was by no means set against him. If one can oblige one's friends one
ought, she said, again to herself.

She had brought him out a cup of coffee, and he was sitting in a
garden chair with a cigar in his mouth. They were Walter and Edith
to each other, just as though they were cousins. Indeed, it was
necessary that they should be cousins to each other, for the rest of
their lives, if no more.

[Illustration: She had brought him out a cup of coffee.]

"Let us drop the Captain and the Miss," he had said himself; "the
mischief is in it if you and I can't suppose ourselves to be
related." She had assented cordially, and had called him Walter
without a moment's hesitation. "Edith," he said to her now, after he
had sat for a minute or two with the coffee in his hand; "did you
ever hear of a certain cousin of ours, called Mary Lowther?"

"Oh, dear, yes; she lives with Aunt Sarah at Loring; only Aunt Sarah
isn't my aunt, and Miss Lowther isn't my cousin."

"Just so. She lives at Loring. Edith, I love you so much that I
wonder whether I may tell you the great secret of my life?"

"Of course you may. I love secrets; and I specially love the secrets
of those who love me." She said this with a voice perfectly clear,
and a face without a sign of disappointment; but her little dream had
already been dissipated. She knew the secret as well as though it had
been told.

"I was engaged to marry her."

"And you will marry her?"

"It was broken off,--when I thought that I should be forced to go to
India. The story is very long, and very sad. It is my own father who
has ruined me. But I will tell it you some day." Then he told it all,
as he was sitting there with his cigar in his hand. Stories may seem
to be very long, and yet be told very quickly.

"But you will go back to her now?" said Edith.

"She has not waited for me."

"What do you mean?"

"They tell me that she is to be married to a--to a--certain Mr.
Gilmore."

"Already!"

"He had offered t