ght to tell him?" said she, slowly.

"Certainly."

She went away and wrote to Macleod; but she did not wholly explain her
position. She only begged once more for time to consider her own
feelings. It would be better that he should not come just now to London.
And if she were convinced, after honest and earnest questioning of
herself, that she had not the courage and strength of mind necessary for
the great change in her life she had proposed, would it not be better
for his happiness and hers that the confession should be made?

Macleod did not answer that letter, and she grew alarmed. Several days
elapsed. One afternoon, coming home from rehearsal, she saw a card lying
on the tray on the hall-table.

"Papa," said she, with her face somewhat paler than usual, "Sir Keith
Macleod is in London!"

CHAPTER XXXIX.

A CLIMAX.

She was alone in the drawing-room. She heard the bell ring, and the
sound of some one being let in by the front door. Then there was a man's
step in the passage outside. The craven heart grew still with dread.

But it was with a great gentleness that he came forward to her, and took
both of her trembling hands, and said,--

"Gerty, you do not think that I have come to be angry with you--not
that!"

He could not but see with those anxious, pained, tender eyes of his that
she was very pale; and her heart was now beating so fast--after the
first shock of fright--that for a second or two she could not answer
him. She withdrew her hands. And all this time he was regarding her face
with an eager, wistful intensity.

"It is--so strange--for me to see you again," said he, almost in a
bewildered way. "The days have been very long without you--I had almost
forgotten what you were like. And now--and now--oh, Gerty, you are not
angry with me for troubling you?"

She withdrew a step and sat down.

"There is a chair," said she. He did not seem to understand what she
meant. He was trying to read her thoughts in her eyes, in her manner, in
the pale face; and his earnest gaze did not leave her for a moment.

"I know you must be greatly troubled and worried, Gerty; and--and I
tried not to come; but your last letter was like the end of the world
for me. I thought everything might go then. But then I said, 'Are you a
man, and to be cast down by that? She is bewildered by some passing
doubt; her mind is sick for the moment; you must go to her, and recall
her, and awake her to herself; and you will se