“You must pocket your pride, my dear. I don’t pretend to take sides with Harold, but you must admit that he never runs after any other girls. Indeed, he is barely civil to any other woman except yourself. He is a romantic sort of fellow, a modern knight-errant, full of poetry, chivalry and all that kind of thing. His friendship or his love nothing will alter when once given. He is an idealist, and being so much out of the common run of simpering, deceitful dandies, merits a peculiar consideration. With all these super-excellent qualities, he is as stupid as a mule, and if you don’t want to lose him you must call him back to you--that’s the beginning and the end of it!” For a little while Lady Elaine was silent. Then she paced the floor like an insulted queen. It was a struggle between love and pride. “I will think it over, Colonel Greyson,” she said, tremulously. “I will think it over, and----” “You will wait until it is too late, child. The mad-brained fellow will be gone past recall,” the old soldier said, vigorously. “Oh, what am I to do?” was her piteous cry. “I have no one to advise me!” “Am I not advising you? Let me go back to Annesley Park and tell him that you wish to see him.” “But that would mean unconditional surrender,” Lady Elaine replied, with a flash of scorn. “I will not be treated like a willful child--no, not if my heart were rended to atoms! What wrong have I done? Sir Harold listens to every scrap of tittle-tattle and believes it. You have come to champion his cause, Colonel Greyson, and in your heart you think that I am all to blame.” “No--no!” he protested. “You are both equally foolish. If you had seen him as I have seen him this morning, you would throw your pride to the winds. Do not let me go away feeling that my efforts have been in vain. My child, I am old enough to be your father. I am a man of the world, who has experienced the bitterness and misery of such folly as this.” “If he had come himself!” murmured Elaine. “If he had only come himself!” “Shall I give him that message?” was the eager question. “Yes, I will tell him that you wish to see him--that you have relented.” For a minute the girl was silent. Would it be fair to Margaret Nugent? Had she not kindly counseled her--counseled her with the best of intentions? And to ignore her would be ungrateful--cruel! “No, you must take no message from me yet,” she said, imperiously. “You are probably exaggerating things, Colonel Greyson, in your anxiety to bring about a reconciliation. You must not forget that, as Sir Harold Annesley’s wife, I may have to live through many years of such jealous torture as this, unless I analyze his true character before marriage.”