“Yours is, always,” she asserted loyally, and he winced as if she had struck him a blow. “I assure you I haven’t known you all my life for nothing, Vance. And it was because I had known you as no other woman ever will, that I was willing to try to make you happy.” He was wondering dumbly how much of this he could stand when she continued, quite calmly, though the brown eyes were looking past him. “As I have said, I had to come: there is a crisis; and with your letters before me, I couldn’t write. We agreed once, you remember, to go around the sentimental field instead of going through it; but--but you haven’t been living up to the spirit of that agreement in your letters.” Tregarvon found his handkerchief and mopped his face. The matchless autumn afternoon had grown suddenly sweltering for him. “You mean that I’ve been writing you love-letters? I’m a brute, Elizabeth. I----” “Please don’t make it any harder for me than you are obliged to,” she pleaded gently. “If you stop me now, I shall never be able to go on. I have come all the way down here to say something to you; something that I couldn’t write, and a thing that every added letter of yours was making more difficult to say. But one word from you now will make it easier--if it is the right word. Tell me, Vance; hasn’t this separation proved to you that we couldn’t--that cousins ought not to marry?” Slowly it ground its way into his brain that the worst had befallen; that Elizabeth, really and truly in love with him, now, had guessed, either from his letters or from Richardia’s, the true state of affairs; and that womanly pride and affection had brought her to the scene of action to commit martyrdom. “Oh, by Jove!--you mustn’t, Elizabeth!” he broke out in a sudden access of contrition. “I can’t allow you to outdo me in pure generosity that way! And, besides, there is Uncle Byrd’s money.” “I have thought of that, too,” she said, quite judicially. “But, Vance, dear, we must simply rise superior to all the mere money considerations. Richardia has been telling me about your prospects here--your mine--and your brave struggle to make something out of nothing. You will need Uncle Byrd’s money; you are needing it now. And I--if we--well, I shall not need it, anyhow,” she ended rather incoherently. “The Lord help me, Elizabeth!” he groaned, entirely ignoring the white-haired, white-mustached figure smoking peacefully at the farther end of the veranda. “I don’t deserve----” “I know you don’t,” she agreed instantly; “you deserve ... well, you deserve something quite different. But whatever happens, and whatever you say, I must do what I came here to do. I--I have made a discovery, Cousin Vance.” “Of course you have,” he said desperately. “I knew you would, sooner or later, though I have tried awfully hard to make myself believe that there wasn’t any discovery to be made.” “I know: but seriously, Vance; deep down in your heart, you don’t really care, do you?”