d her hand. I understood the whole secret now. My hair is
blonde like Orrin's, and her feelings stood confessed, never more to
be mistaken by me.

"You love Orrin!" I gasped; "you who are pledged to Colonel Schuyler!"

"I love Orrin," she whispered, "and I am pledged to Colonel Schuyler.
But you will never betray me," she said.

"I betray you?" I cried, and if some of the bitterness of my own
disappointed hopes crept into my tones, she did not seem to note it,
for she came quite close to my side and looked up into my face in a
way that almost made me forget her perfidy and her folly. "Juliet," I
went on, for I felt never more strongly than at this moment that I
should act a brother's part towards her, "I could never find it in my
heart to betray you, but are you sure that you are doing wisely to
betray the Colonel for a man no better than Orrin. I--I know you do
not want to hear me say this, for if you care for him you must think
him good and noble, but Juliet, I know him and I know the Colonel, and
he is no more to be compared with the man you are betrothed to
than--"

"Hush!" she cried, almost commandingly, and the airy, dainty, dimpled
creature whom I knew seemed to grow in stature and become a woman, in
her indignation; "you do not know Orrin and you do not know the
Colonel. You shall not draw comparisons between them. I will have you
think of Orrin only, as I do, day and night, ever and always."

"But," I exclaimed, aghast, "if you love him so and despise the
Colonel, why do you not break your troth with the latter?"

"Because," she murmured, with white cheeks and a wandering gaze, "I
have sworn to marry the Colonel, and I dare not break my oath. Sworn
to be his wife when the house he is building is complete; and the oath
was on the graves of the dead; _on the graves of the dead!_" she
repeated.

"But," I said, without any intimation of having heard that oath, "you
are breaking that oath in private with every thought you give to
Orrin. Either complete your perjury by disowning the Colonel
altogether, or else give up Orrin. You cannot cling to both without
dishonor; does not your father tell you so?"

"My father--oh, he does not know; no one knows but you. My father
likes the Colonel; I would never think of telling him."

"Juliet," I declared solemnly, "you are on dangerous ground. Think
what you are doing before it is too late. The Colonel is not a man to
be trifled with."

"I know it," she murmured, "