w that you had been
here nearly three hours? And I have given you nothing but a cup of tea!"

"What else do you think I have wanted?"

"At your club you would have had cigars and brandy-and-water, and
billiards, and broiled bones, and oysters, and tankards of beer. I know
all about it. You have been very patient with me. If you go quick
perhaps you will not be too late for the tankards and the oysters."

"I never have any tankards or any oysters."

"Then it is cigars and brandy-and-water. Go quick, and perhaps you may
not be too late."

"I will go, but not there. I cannot change my thoughts so suddenly."

"Go, then; and do not change your thoughts. Go and think of me, and pity
me. Pity me for what I have got, but pity me most for what I have lost."
Harry silently took her hand, and kissed it, and then left her.

Pity her for what she had lost! What had she lost! What did she mean by
that? He knew well what she meant by pitying her for what she had got.
What had she lost? She had lost him. Did she intend to evoke his pity
for that loss? She had lost him. Yes, indeed. Whether or no the loss was
one to regret, he would not say to himself; or rather, he, of course,
declared that it was not; but such as it was, it had been incurred. He
was now the property of Florence Burton, and, whatever happened, he
would be true to her.

Perhaps he pitied himself also. If so, it is to be hoped that Florence
may never know of such pity. Before he went to bed, when he was praying
on his knees, he inserted it in his prayers that God in whom he believed
might make him true in his faith to Florence Burton.

Chapter XVII

The Rivals

Lady Ongar sat alone, long into the night, when Harry Clavering had left
her. She sat there long, getting up occasionally from her seat, once or
twice attempting to write at her desk, looking now and then at a paper
or two, and then at a small picture which she had, but passing the long
hours in thinking--in long, sad, solitary thoughts. What should she do
with herself--with herself, her title, and her money? Would it be still
well that she should do something, that she should make some attempt; or
should she, in truth, abandon all, as the arch-traitor did, and
acknowledge that for her foot there could no longer be a resting-place
on the earth? At six-and-twenty, with youth, beauty and wealth at her
command, must she despair? But her youth had been stained, her beauty
had lost its freshness,