'Engaged! How your tongue does run on, Robert,' replied Ellinor, with a curious laugh. 'He has never even spoken to me in any very pointed manner; but rather than be worried thus,' she added, with a swelling in her slender throat, 'I must ask you to forget me--do.' 'Men such as I am do not forget so easily, Ellinor.' The angry colour died out of Wodrow's dark face, and, clenching his hands, he muttered under his thick moustache--'Curse him!' 'He would not speak thus, Robert, if it is Sir Redmond you mean. He has seen a great deal of the best of society.' 'And a great deal more of the worst, I suspect,' said her lover, more exasperated by the slightest defence of his supposed rival; but, nerving himself to be calm, he asked--'Am I, then, to suppose that you have not promised your future--the future that I have a right to say was not yours to assign--to this stranger--to this sudden interloper?' 'I have not. But why be so mysterious, tragic, and absurd, Robert?' she exclaimed, with a little gasping laugh that nearly became a sob; for, sooth to say, Ellinor's secret heart upbraided her, and she felt that she was treating the lover of her girlhood and the friend of all her years with duplicity. 'Then,' said he, 'why do you permit attentions that are purposeless to you, and most distasteful to me?' 'Robert, what do you mean?' she asked, plaintively. 'I mean, why do you permit that tawny-haired fellow to flirt with you, and excite the comment of lookers-on?' 'He does not flirt with me, Robert.' 'Do you mean to say that his attentions are more serious than what is called flirtation?' 'I say nothing about them,' said Ellinor, annoyed and alarmed by his vehemence and categorical questioning. 'Ah--indeed!' he hissed through his clenched teeth. 'I cannot prevent him saying things sometimes--without--without making a scene. Do not be hard upon me, Robert--I do love you--I always loved you; not perhaps as you wish--but--but----' She paused, sobbed, and laid her sweet face upon his arm, which went caressingly round her bent and beautiful head, with all its wealth of dark brown flowing hair. 'You love me!' he whispered, softly. 'As an old friend--oh, yes.' He withdrew, and again eyed her gloomily and silently. 'Advise me, Robert,' said she, imploringly. 'In what can I advise you, if your own heart does not?' 'We are both so miserably poor.' 'And your new admirer is so rich?' They were drifting among shoals again, so Ellinor made no reply. 'I suppose he loves you? To judge by my own heart, Ellinor, I don't wonder at it--but if so, why does he not at once come to the point and end his dangling? Why delay, and why conceal?' 'Do not let us quarrel, Robert,' said the girl, gently and sweetly, with her soft hazel eyes full of unshed tears; 'we have always been such chums--such friends. Some one is coming--kiss me once more--and kiss me quickly!'