she said, "one will do much that
one hates. When I think that but for this man my father might still have
been alive, might have lived to know how much I loathed those who sent
him into exile--well, I feel then that there is nothing in the world I
would not do to crush him!"

He rose to his feet--his fresh, rather boyish, face was wrinkled with
care.

"I shall live to be sorry, Ernestine," he said, "that I ever told you
the truth about your father."

"If I had discovered it for myself," she said, "and, sooner or later, I
should have discovered it, and had learned that you too had been in the
conspiracy, I should never have spoken to you again as long as I lived."

"Then I must not regret it," he said, "only I hate the part you are
going to play. I hate to think that I must stand by and watch, and say
nothing."

"There is no reason," she said, "why you should watch it; why do you not
go away for a time?"

"I cannot," he answered sadly, "and you know why."

She was impatient, but she looked at him for a moment with a gleam of
sadness in her eyes.

"It would be much better for you," she said, "if you would make up your
mind to put that folly behind you."

"It may be folly, but it is not the sort of folly one forgets."

"You had better try then, Cecil," she said, "for it is quite hopeless.
You know that. Be a man and leave off dwelling upon the impossible. I do
not wish to marry, and I do not expect to, but if ever I did, it would
not be you!"

He was silent for a few moments--looking gloomily across at the girl,
loathing the thought that she, his ideal of all those things which
most become a woman, graceful, handsome, perfectly bred, should ever be
brought into contact at all with such a man as this one whose confidence
she was planning to gain. No, he could not go away and leave her! He
must be at hand, must remain her friend.

"I wonder," he said, "couldn't we have one of our old evenings again?
Listen--"

"I would rather not," she interrupted softly. "If you will persist in
talking of a forbidden subject you must go away. Be reasonable, Cecil."

He was silent for a moment. When he spoke again his tone was changed.

"Very well," he said. "I will try to let things be as you wish--for the
present. Now do you want to hear some news?"

She nodded.

"Of course."

"It's about Dick--seems rather a coincidence too. He was at the Cape,
you know, with a firm of surveyors, and he's been offered a post on the