as always attentive; he went out into the hall and returned
with a shawl that he found there.

"You cannot go out with those beautiful arms uncovered, Elinor," he
said, gently.

He placed the shawl around her, trying to hide the coward, trembling
fear.

"As though I did not love you," he said, reproachfully. "Show me another
woman only half so fair."

Pauline made one more effort.

"Lady Darrell," she cried, with outstretched hands, "you will not decide
hastily--you will take time to judge?"

But as they passed out together, something in the delicate face told her
that her love for Aubrey Langton was the strongest element in her
nature.

"Lady Darrell," she cried again, "do not listen to him! I swear I have
told you the truth--Heaven will judge between him and me if I have not!"

"You must have studied tragedy at the Porte St. Martin," said Aubrey
Langton, with a forced laugh; "Lady Darrell knows which to believe."

She watched them walk across the lawn, Captain Langton pleading
earnestly, Lady Darrell's face softening as she listened.

"I am too late!" cried the girl, in an agony of self-reproach. "All my
humiliation is in vain; she will believe him and not me. I cannot save
her now, but one word spoken in time might have done so."

Oh, the bitterness of the self-reproach that tortured her--the anguish
of knowing that she could have prevented Lady Darrell's wrecking her
whole life, yet had not done so! It was no wonder that she buried her
face in her hands, weeping and praying as she had never wept and prayed
in her life before.

* * * * *

"Elinor, look at me," said Captain Langton; "do I look like a thief and
a would-be murderer?"

Out of Pauline's presence the handsome face had regained its usual
careless, debonair expression.

She raised her eyes, and he saw in them the lingering doubt, the
lingering fear.

"If all the world had turned against me," he said, "and had refused to
believe in me, you, Elinor, my promised wife, ought to have had more
faith."

She made no reply. There had been something in the energy of Pauline's
manner that carried conviction with it; and the weak heart, the weak
nature that had always relied upon others, could form no decision
unaided.

"For argument sake, let us reverse the case. Say that some disappointed
lover of yours came to tell to me that you had been discovered stealing;
should I not have laughed? Why, Elinor, you must be b