titia"--indignantly--"is a very handsome woman, not more than ten
years older than yourself. _She_ a protector!"

"I can't help that."

"Yes, you can; but your--obstinacy--won't allow you. Do you, then,
intend to let no one know of your affairs?"

"I shall confide in Cecil Stafford, because I can't avoid it. But I
know she will keep my secret until I give her leave to speak."

"It comes to this, then, that you consider every one before me. It is
nothing to you whether I eat my heart out in ignorance of whether you
are alive or dead."

"Cecil"--hastily--"may tell you so much."

"Thank you; this is a wonderful concession."

"Why should I concede at all, when, as I have said, you are no longer
bound to me?"

"But I am,--more strongly so than ever; and I insist, I desire you,
Molly, to let me know what it is you intend doing."

He looks sterner than one would have conceived possible for him; Miss
Massereene evidently thinks him inhumanly so.

"Don't speak to me like that," she says, with quivering lips. "You
should not. I have made a vow not to disclose my secret to you of all
people, and would you have me break it?"

"But why?" impatiently.

"Because--have I not told you already?--because"--with a little dry
sob--"I love you so dearly that to encourage thoughts of you would
unfit me for my work. And it is partly for your own sake I do it, for
something tells me we shall never marry each other; and why should you
spend your life dreaming of a shadow?"

"It is the cruelest resolution a woman ever formed," replies he,
ignoring as beneath notice the latter part of her speech, and, putting
away her hands, takes once more to his irritable promenade up and down
the room.

Molly is crying, silently, exhaustedly. "My burden is too heavy for
me," she murmurs, faintly.

"Then why not let me help you to bear it?"

"If it will comfort you, Teddy"--brokenly--"I will give in so far as to
promise to write to you in six months. I ask you to wait till then. Is
it too long? If so, remember you are free--believe me it will be better
so--and I perhaps shall be happier in the thought----" And here
incontinently she breaks down.

"Don't," says Luttrell, hurriedly, whose heart grows faint within him
at the sight of her distress. "Molly, I give in. I am satisfied with
your last promise. I shall wait forever, if that will please you. Who
am I, that I should add one tear to the many you have already shed?
Forgive me, my own lo