"Not she! A live lover is more present than a dead one. Has she sworn pretty vows to you, Montagu? 'At lovers' perjuries, they say, love laughs.' Is there nothing to be said for me? Will her heart not always whisper that I deserve gratitude and love, that I perilled my life for her, saved the lives of her brother and her lover, neither of them friends of mine, again reprieved her lover's life, stood friend to her through all her trouble? You know a woman's way--to make much of nothing." "Forgive, if I prod a lagging memory, Miss Westerleigh?" Long he laughed and merrily. "Eloped for Gretna Green with Tony Creagh last night, and I, poor forsaken swain, faith! I do not pursue." You may be sure that dashed me. I felt as a trapped fox with the dogs closing in. The future loomed up clear before me, Aileen hand in hand with Volney scattering flowers on my grave in sentimental mood. The futility of my obstinacy made me bitter. "Come, Montagu! Listen to reason," urged the tempter. "You get in my way, but I don't want to let you be sponged out. The devil of it is that if I get you a pardon--and I'm not sure that I can get it--you'll marry the girl. I might have you shipped to the Barbadoes as a slave with some of the others, but to be frank I had rather see you hanged than give you so scurvy an end. Forswear what is already lost and make an end of it." I turned away blackly. "You have my answer. Sir Robert, you have played your last card. Now let me die in peace." He shrugged impatiently and left me. "A fool's answer, yet a brave man's too," he muttered. Aileen, heart-broken with the failure of her mission, reached town on Thursday and came at once to the prison. Her face was as the face of troubled waters. I had no need to ask the question on my lips. With a sobbing cry she threw herself on my breast. My heart was woe for her. Utter weariness was in her manner. All through the long days and nights she had agonized, and now at last despaired. There seemed no tears left to shed. Long I held her tight, teeth set, as one who would keep his own perforce from that grim fate which would snatch his love from him. She shivered to me half-swooning, pale and of wondrous beauty, nesting in my arms as a weary homing-bird. A poignant grief o'erflowed in me. "Oh, Aileen! At least we have love left," I cried, breaking the long silence. "Always! Always!" her white lips answered. "Then let us regret nothing. They can do with me what they will. What are life and death when in the balance dwells love?" I cried, rapt in unearthly worship of her. Her eyes found mine. "Oh, Kenneth, I cannot--I cannot--let you go."