'Do, if possible,' said she, with genuine surprise. 'Pardon the admission, Miss Collingwood, but all night long Sir Carnaby sang the praises of a certain Major Desmond.' Clare coloured deeply; her eyes darkened, and sparkled, yet softly, under the sweep of their long black lashes. 'It was horrible taste in papa--to _you_ especially! How could he act so strangely?' 'So cruelly, Clare,' said Trevor Chute, with a burst of honest emotion, born of the sudden line this conversation had taken. 'Fear not for Desmond,' said she, in a bitter, yet low tone, as she shook her graceful head. 'He was to--to propose for your hand.' 'He did so this morning,' was the calm reply. 'And you, Miss Collingwood, you----' 'Refused him.' 'Oh, Clare!' exclaimed Trevor, and all the old love beamed in his eyes as he uttered her name. 'Neither doubt nor misunderstand me,' said Clare, very calmly, and in a voice that was earnest, sweet, and low. 'Papa and others too' ('What others?' thought Chute) 'have tried hard to make me forget what you and I were to each other once, but he and they have failed.' 'Thank God!' exclaimed Chute, so full of emotion that he clutched the back of a chair for support. 'In the seeming emptiness of my heart,' said Clare, speaking in a low tone and with downcast eyes, while the throbbing of her bosom was apparent beneath her dress, 'I made for myself a life within a life, known to myself alone.' 'And that life, darling?' 'Was full of _you_.' He made a step towards her; but she drew back, and said, questioningly: 'And you, Trevor, in the days of this long separation?' 'Have never, never forgotten you, Clare!' 'Yet you must have seen many!' 'Many--yes, and lovely women, too; but never have I felt a touch of even the slightest passing pang or preference for any one out of the many.' Clare gazed at him softly and sweetly. She did not, she could not, tell him that in the intervals of a brilliant garden party she had rejected for the third time the passionate supplications and proposals of one who could have made her a marchioness; and those who knew of this thought her cold and proud, but they were wrong, for Clare was 'one of those women who, beneath the courtly negligence of a chill manner, are capable of infinite tenderness, infinite nobility, and infinite self-reproach,' and her heart was loving, tender, sweet, and warm as a summer rose to those who knew her, and whom she loved. The mist was dispelling fast now. Again they were discovering, or recalling, all that was sympathetic in each other, and learning to understand each other by word, and hint, or glance, when soul seemed to speak to soul, and more than all, when hand met hand, did Clare feel that which she had never felt since their separation, how magnetic was the influence between them, and how no other hand had made the blood course through her veins as his had done.