in
time you will forget me."

"Forget you! I can never forget you, Elizabeth. Your trust in me--an
unknown, friendless man, your goodness to me, your sweet pity for me,
will never be forgotten. Can you wonder if I loved you, and if I thought
that my love must surely have betrayed itself? I fancied that you
guessed it----"

"No, no," she said, hurriedly. "I did not guess. I did not think. I only
knew that you were a kind friend to me, and taught me and helped me in
many ways. I have been often very lonely--I never had a friend."

"Is Percival Heron, then, no friend to you?" he asked, with something of
indignant sternness in his voice.

"Ah, yes, he is a friend; but not--not--I cannot tell you what he
is----"

"But you love him?" cried Brian, the sternness changing to anguish, as
the doubt first presented itself to him. "Elizabeth, do not tell me that
you have promised yourself to a man that you do not love! I may be
miserable; but do not let me think that you will be miserable, too."

He caught both her hands in his and looked her steadily in the face. "I
have heard them say that you never told a lie in all your life," he went
on. "Speak the truth still, Elizabeth, and tell me whether you love
Percival Heron as a woman should love a man! Tell me the truth."

She shrank a little at first, and tried to take her hands away. But when
she found that Brian's clasp was firm, she drew herself up and looked
him in the face with eyes that were full of an unutterable sadness, but
also of a resolution which nothing on earth could shake.

"You have no right to ask me the question," she said; "and I have no
right to give you any answer."

But something in her troubled face told him what that answer would have
been.

CHAPTER XXIV.

"GOOD-BYE."

"I see," he said, dropping her hands and turning away with a heavy sigh.
"I was too late."

"Don't misunderstand me," said Elizabeth, with an effort. "I shall be
very happy. I owe a debt to my uncle and my cousins which scarcely
anything can repay."

"Give them anything but yourself" he said, gravely. "It is not right--I
do not speak for myself now, but for you--it is not right to marry a man
whom you do not love."

"But I did not say that I do not love him," she cried, trying to shield
herself behind this barrier of silence. "I said only that you had no
right to ask the question."

Brian looked at her and paused.

"You are wrong," he said at last, but so gently