elt that if she still hoped to do any good, she
must speak the truth out at once. She must ask Lady Ongar whether she
held herself to be engaged to Harry Clavering. If she did not do this,
nothing could come of the present interview.

"You say that, Lady Ongar, but do you mean it?" she asked. "We have been
told that you also are engaged to marry Mr. Clavering."

"Who has told you so?"

"We have heard it. I have heard it, and have been obliged to tell my
sister that I had done so."

"And who told you? Did you hear it from Harry Clavering himself?"

"I did. I heard it in part from him."

"Then why have you come beyond him to me? He must know. If he has told
you that he is engaged to marry me, he must also have told you that he
does not intend to marry Miss Florence Burton. It is not for me to
defend him or to accuse him. Why do you come to me?"

"For mercy and forbearance," said Mrs. Burton, rising from her seat and
coming over to the side of the room in which Lady Ongar was seated.

"And Miss Burton has sent you?"

"No; she does not know that I am here; nor does my husband know it. No
one knows it. I have come to tell you that before God this man is
engaged to become the husband of Florence Burton. She has learned to
love him, and has now no other chance of happiness."

"But what of his happiness?"

"Yes, we are bound to think of that. Florence is bound to think of that
above all things."

"And so am I. I love him too--as fondly, perhaps, as she can do. I loved
him first, before she had even heard his name."

"But, Lady Ongar--"

"Yes, you may ask the question if you will, and I will answer it truly."
They were both standing now and confronting each other. "Or I will
answer it without your asking it. I was false to him. I would not marry
him because he was poor, and then I married another because he was rich.
All that is true. But it does not make me love him the less now. I have
loved him through it all. Yes, you are shocked, but it is true; I have
loved him through it all. And what am I to do now, if he still loves me?
I can give him wealth now."

"Wealth will not make him happy."

"It has not made me happy, but it may help to do so with him. But with
me, at any rate, there can be no doubt. It is his happiness to which I
am bound to look. Mrs. Burton, if I thought that I could make him happy,
and if he would come to me, I would marry him to-morrow, though I broke
your sister's heart by doing so. But