Never!"

"And you did love me once?" She at any rate knew how to find the tender
words that were required for her purpose.

"Indeed I did."

"It did not last very long; did it, Lord George?"

"It was you that--that--. It was you that stopped it."

"Yes, it was I that stopped it. Perhaps I found it easier to--stop than
I had expected. But it was all for the best. It must have been
stopped. What could our life have been? I was telling a friend to mine
the other day, a lady, that there are people who cannot afford to wear
hearts inside them. If I had jumped at your offer,--and there was a
moment when I would have done so----"

"Was there?"

"Indeed there was, George." The "George" didn't mean quite as much as
it might have meant between others, because they were cousins. "But, if
I had, the joint home of us all must have been in Mr. Price's
farm-house."

"It isn't a farm-house."

"You know what I mean. But I want you to believe that I thought of you
quite as much as of myself,--more than of myself. I should at any rate
have had brilliant hopes before me. I could understand what it would be
to be the Marchioness of Brotherton. I could have borne much for years
to think that at some future day I might hang on your arm in London
salons as your wife. I had an ambition which now can never be
gratified. I, too, can look on this picture and on that. But I had to
decide for you as well as for myself, and I did decide that it was not
for your welfare nor for your honour, nor for your happiness to marry a
woman who could not help you in the world." She was now leaning forward
and almost touching his arm. "I think sometimes that those most nearly
concerned hardly know what a woman may have to endure because she is
not selfish."

How could any man stand this? There are words which a man cannot resist
from a woman even though he knows them to be false. Lord George, though
he did not quite believe that all these words were sincere, did think
that there was a touch of sincerity about them--an opinion which the
reader probably will not share with Lord George. "Have you suffered?"
he said, putting out his hand to her and taking hers.

"Suffered!" she exclaimed, drawing away her hand, and sitting bolt
upright and shaking her head. "Do you think that I am a fool, not to
know! Do you suppose that I am blind and deaf? When I said that I was
one of those who could not afford to wear a heart, did you imagine that
I had been able