‘I know nothing about three, four, or five times. You persisted, recollect, in making me talk of an uninteresting subject, my own past life, and----’ ‘And am I to think--are you putting me to the humiliation, now too late,’ she exclaimed, the thought of his kiss returning to her, ‘the humiliation of feeling, here, under my grandfather’s roof, that I am offered your love at second-hand?’ A few instants ago Geoffrey’s impulse had been to take her in his arms, to forgive her in spite of her injustice! But her tone had changed. It was hard, suspicious. It bespoke pride, not only of race, but of money. All the inherited baser possibilities of her nature had, under the moment’s white anger, gained the ascendancy in poor Marjorie’s breast. Geff was sensible of them and recoiled. For the first time to-day, it occurred to him that the girl he sought to marry was not only a Bartrand but an heiress, his superior in position as in purse. ‘I don’t like to hear you say “humiliation.” Such love as I feel for you,’ confessed Geoffrey Arbuthnot, nobly and simply, ‘could humiliate no woman.’ ‘And if it comes at second-hand, if some one else before my time has appraised its value, and flung it aside?’ ‘Miss Bartrand, you must explain to me what you mean by that question.’ ‘I mean,’ flamed forth Marjorie, her whole angry soul throbbing in her voice, ‘that I must be first--first, Mr. Arbuthnot, in the heart of the man I marry.’ ‘Would you not be first in mine?’ ‘I should give him all. I could accept nothing short of all in return. If, afterwards, I found that I had been deceived--you understand me, if I knew that I had been chosen from other motives than love--I should make his life and my own most miserable!’ And, indeed, the passion of her voice and face gave to the prophecy only too much an air of certitude. Geoffrey Arbuthnot walked to a neighbouring window. Pushing back the half-closed shutters he saw before him a wide expanse of the Manoir gardens; through an arch of cedar boughs he caught a goodly vista of fields and orchards beyond. And all that he looked upon would one day be Marjorie’s! With crushing force came the conviction that he had fallen into a desperate error, had walked blindfolded, a second time, into a Fool’s Paradise. Marjorie Bartrand’s youth, the intimacy into which they had been thrown, his own absolute want of premeditation might be excused. The facts were there, looking, as disagreeable facts have a knack of doing, with transparent clearness in his face. He had walked into a Fool’s Paradise. To accept the position, give Marjorie Bartrand back her freedom, unconditionally, were the moment’s immediate and exceeding bitter duties. The wilful hot-headed child of seventeen--conquered at one moment, at the next resisting--repented her, already, of her bargain. Let that bargain be cancelled.