“Why, Elizabeth! Of course I care. And I have blamed myself straight through from the first.” “Oh, but you mustn’t do that!” she protested quickly. “It is all my fault, or my--no, I simply _won’t_ call it a misfortune.” “Your fault?” he queried. “You mean because you didn’t suspect it and choke it off right at the beginning. But I haven’t give you a chance to do that, have I?” “I didn’t suspect it,” she said musingly; “I was very far from suspecting it. It came all at once, like a blow, you know; and then it was too late to ‘choke it off,’ as you say.” The man, the true man, in him rose up in its might to buffet him into the path of uprightness and straightforwardness. “No; it is not too late, Elizabeth,” he assured her gravely. “Yes, it is,” she objected with pathetic earnestness. “No,” he insisted. “We must still make good. Do you know what people at home will say if our engagement is broken now? They will say that I made it impossible for you to carry out Uncle Byrd’s wishes; and that I did it deliberately, to get the money for myself.” “But you haven’t!” she cried in wide-eyed astonishment. “_I_ am the guilty one.” “You?” “Yes. This is what I came all the way from Philadelphia to say to you, Vance. Do you remember, one time when we were trying to ‘galvanize,’ I think that was the word you used, ourselves into the sentimental ecstasy supposed to be the normal condition of engaged people, I told you jokingly that if I ever found any one whom I could really lo--like better----” “_Elizabeth!_” She nodded, soberly and looked away from him. “Yes; it is true; and I had to come and tell you. You may despise me; it is your privilege.” Tregarvon got up and took the necessary step to the veranda end which gave him the view into the rearward flower-garden. They were there, Carfax and Richardia, bending together over the chrysanthemums. When he turned back to face his cousin he was smiling grimly. “As our cattle-ranching cousin in the West would say, you mustn’t ‘rawhide’ yourself too severely, Elizabeth. Leaving the dollars out of it--and I’ll find a way to leave them out if I have to throw them to the birds--I’m getting about what I deserve; which is the glad hand all around the block.” “You are bitter, and I can’t blame you,” she said, with something alarmingly like a sob at the catching of her breath. “But really, at the very bottom of it all, you don’t care so very much, do you, Vance?” “Don’t I? I’d be a mighty good specimen of the superman if I didn’t care. Who is this fellow who, coming after me, is preferred before me?” “I--I can’t tell you that.” “Why can’t you?” “Because--oh, you are perfectly savage with me!--because he has had no right to speak, nor I to listen. He hasn’t spoken; he may never speak. But that doesn’t make any difference.”