"About--a girl--you!" A note of excitement was apparent in her accents; she looked at him narrowly. "Has it--come--at last, Rupert?" she questioned, and her quiet voice shook just a little. "No--no--my God--_no_!" he exclaimed, "nothing of that sort is ever likely to come into my life--again"--he uttered the last words under his breath, and his eyes rested hungrily on her beautiful face--"there is no question of--my caring for any girl--only--young Jack Layton has made me responsible for what may make a perfectly innocent girl unhappy." And forthwith he plunged into a full description of the sheaf of letters received that morning, winding up with a mention of the terse little letter signed "C.M." His listener's eyes twinkled mischievously as he told the first part of his story in wrathful accents, and over some of his quotations from the letters that had reached him she laughed--a frank, delicious laugh that seemed oddly out of keeping with the tragic mystery of her eyes. But as he described that last letter, with its simple wording, her face grew grave again, and when his voice ceased, she uttered the precise words that had fallen from his own lips three hours earlier. "Poor little girl--oh! poor little girl!" "I am sorry for her," Mernside said impetuously, "and it doesn't seem fair that she should perhaps suffer for that idiotic young fool's love of practical jokes. Goodness knows what hopes she may have built upon this letter, and upon me. Of course, I can't give her a home, and I don't want to meet her--with a view to--anything. There is no place in my life for women, even as friends. There is no place in my life for more than--one woman," he ended vehemently. "Hush!" she said softly. "Remember--you promised; and--if you break your promise, I can't ever let you come here again." "I know--I know!" he cried, with an impetuosity very foreign to his usual self-control; "but, Margaret, is it to be like this always? Will a time never come when you--when I----" She put out her hand and laid it over one of his, with a firm touch that had a curiously quieting effect upon him. "You and I are great friends, as we have been for--longer than we care to think. But--there could not ever be an idea between us of anything else, not even the thought of such a thing. It is out of the question. It always has been out of the question. You know that as well as I do, and you must not come here at all, unless you can keep to our agreement in spirit as well as in letter." "Is our friendship nothing to you?" he asked sullenly. "It is--so much to me--that I will not risk spoiling it for ever," she said firmly; "but if you talk as you are talking now, I shall tell Elizabeth I cannot see you."