in time. And so I did--but not--not you."

"And who taught you the lesson that I failed to impart?" asked Percival,
with the sneer in his voice which she knew and dreaded.

"Don't ask me," she said, painfully. "It is not fair to ask me that. I
did not know until it was too late."

"Until he--whoever he was--asked you to marry him, I suppose? Well, when
is the ceremony to take place? Do you expect me to dance at the wedding?
Do you think I am going tamely to resign my rights? My God, Elizabeth,
is it you who can treat me in this way? Are all women as false as you?"

He struck his foot fiercely against the ground, and walked away from
her. When he came back he found her in the same position; white as a
statue, with her hands clasped together upon her knee, and her eyes
fixed upon the running water.

"Do you think that I am a stone," he said, violently, "that you tell me
the story of your falseness so quietly, as if it were a tale that I
should like to hear? Do you think that I feel nothing, or do you care so
little what I feel? You had better have refused me outright at once than
kept me dangling at your feet for a couple of years, only to throw me
over at the last!"

"I have not thrown you over," she said, raising her blue-grey eyes
steadily to his agitated face. "I wanted to tell you; that was all. If
you like to marry me now, knowing the truth, you may do so."

"What!"

"I may have been false to you in heart," she said, the hot blood tinting
her cheeks with carnation as she spoke, "but I will not break my word."

"And what did your lover say to that?" he asked, roughly, as he stood
before her. "Did he not say that you were as false to him as you were to
me? Did he not say that he would come back again and again, and force
you to be true, at least, to him? For that is what I should have done in
his place."

"Then," Elizabeth said, with a touch of antagonism in her tones, "he was
nobler than you."

"Oh, no doubt," said Percival, tossing aside his head. "No doubt he is a
finer fellow in every way. Am I to have the pleasure of making his
acquaintance?"

His scorn, his intolerance, were rousing her spirit at last. She spoke
firmly, with a new light in her eyes, a new self-possession in her
manner.

"You are unjust, Percival. I think that you do not understand what I
mean to tell you. He accepted my decision, and I shall never see him
again. I thought at first that I would not tell you, but let our
engagemen