en as the day.

Mell dried her eyes, and glanced at him anxiously. The worst part of
her duty was now over. She began already to feel relieved; she began
already to know just how she was going to feel in a few minutes more,
the possessor of a conscience, void of offence before God and man.
There's nothing like it--a good conscience.

"This beats all!" soliloquized Rube, at the window; "I'll be hanged if
there's enough solid space in a woman's mind to peg a man's hat on!
Now, just as things have panned out all right for Devonhough, here's a
tombstone in my own graveyard!"

"Ha!" thought Mell, hearing, considering.

"_Just as things have panned out all right for Devonhough._"

What did that mean? Her throbbing, panting, bursting heart knew only
too well. Clara had come to a decision--she would marry Jerome, and
not the Honorable Archibald.

Rube had scarcely ceased to speak when Mell raised her head.

"Rube!"

Very soft that call!

Unheeding, Rube still looked out of the window and into the past. That
day at the picnic--that beautiful day, that day of days; a pure,
white, luminous spot in memory's galaxy of fair and heavenly
things--that day she had not felt as she had made him think she felt;
hence, he had been a cat's-paw, a puppet; and she--oh, it could not be
that Mell was a dissembler, a hypocrite, a serpent!

"Rube!"

A little louder was this call.

He turned, he obeyed--no more able to resist the beckoning hand, the
dulcet voice, the luring glance, than you or I the spells of our own
individual Sirens and Circes.

He came back to her, but stood in gloomy waiting, his brow so dark,
his expression so hard and cold and stern, that the girl on the sofa
felt herself wilting and withering before him, as a frail flower in a
deadly blast.

She did not say a word.

She only used two eyes of blue, and two big tears which rolled out of
them, and down upon her velvet cheek, and splash upon her little white
hand, with crushing effect--not upon the hand, but the beholder.

"Mell," said he, hoarsely, "what is all this? What is the meaning of
it? I do not see your drift, exactly. Do you wish to be free?"

"I thought that would be _your_ wish," floundered Mell, "perhaps, when
you heard of that other--other fancy--you know, Rube; if I had not
told you anything about it, and it had come afterwards to your
knowledge, you would have thought I had not acted squarely towards
you."

"So much, then, I understand; b