Di saw that nothing short of the truth would wrest his persistence from its object. "Yes, I do," she said passionately, trembling from head to foot. "For some one who does not care for me. You and I are both in the same position. Do you see now how useless it is to talk of this any longer?" Both had risen to their feet. Lord Hemsworth looked at Di's white convulsed face, and his own became as ashen. He saw at last that he had no more chance of marrying her than if she were lying at his feet in her coffin. Constancy, which can compass many things, avails nought sometimes. "I beg your pardon," he said, holding out his hand to go. "I think I ought to beg yours," she said brokenly, while their hands clasped tightly each in each. "I never meant to make you as--unhappy as--as I am myself, but yet I have." They looked at each other with tears in their eyes. "It does not matter," said Lord Hemsworth, hoarsely. "I shall be all right--it's you--I think of. Don't stand--mustn't stand--you're too tired. Good-bye." * * * * * Di flung herself down on her face on the sofa as the door closed. She had forgotten Lord Hemsworth's existence the moment after he had left the room. _John had told him that there was nothing between her and_ _himself._ John had told him that. John had said that. A cry escaped her, and she strangled it in the cushion. Hope does not always die when we imagine it does. It is subject to long trances. The hope which she had thought dead was only giving up the ghost now. "Chaque esperance est un oeuf d'ou peut sortir un serpent au lieu d'une colombe." Out of that frail shell of a cherished hope lying broken before her the serpent had crept at last. It moved, it grew before her eyes. "Slighted love is sair to bide." CHAPTER XII. "We met, hand to hand, We clasped hands close and fast, As close as oak and ivy stand; But it is past." CHRISTINA ROSSETTI. "Half false, half fair, all feeble." SWINBURNE. When John roused himself from the long stupor into which he had fallen after Lord Hemsworth's departure, he put his finished letter to Colonel Tempest into an envelope, and then remembered with annoyance that he did not know how to address it. When the landlady in Brook Street had told him that Colonel and Captain Tempest had gone to Brighton that morning, he had been too much taken aback at the moment to think of asking for their address. He was too much exhausted in mind and body to go back to the lodgings for it immediately. He wrote a second letter, this time to his lawyer, and then, conscious of the state of his body by the shaking hand and clumsy, tardy brain which made of a short and explicit statement so lengthy an affair, he mechanically changed his clothes, dined, and sat watching the smoke of his cigar.