At the foot of our garden, overlooking the river, is an old-fashioned summer-house, covered with a luxuriant grapevine, and Godfrey asked Gertie to go there with him as soon as dinner was over. His love was of the impetuous kind, which cannot wait to know the best or worst, and once alone with Gertie and free from observation, save as the bright-eyed robin, whose nest was among the vines, looked curiously down upon him, he burst out passionately and told her of the love which had been growing in his heart since the day he found her on the deck and stole the kiss from her lips. “I have been so hungry for another,” he said, “and I had it, too, yesterday, when you lay by the water’s edge, and I feared you were dead. Forgive me, darling, if I took unfair advantage of your position. I could not help it, and had you died I would have claimed you as mine and told my love to all the world.” “Oh, Godfrey, hush; you must not speak to me like this. Remember Alice,” Gertie said gaspingly, and Godfrey replied: “I do remember her, and it is of her I must first tell you. When in my agony lest you were dead, I called you my darling and kissed your pallid lips, Alice stood beside me a witness to the love which never was hers. She was angry, as she naturally would be, and in her anger made me free from my engagement, and said she hated me and gave me back the ring of betrothal. After that she surely has no claim on me, and if she had I could not respect it now.” Then very rapidly he went over with the entire story of his _affaire du cœur_ with Alice from the time they both were children and the marriage was arranged by their parents. “I like Alice as a friend,” he said; “but I never could have loved her as a wife, and shall not try. I have tasted a little the sweets of loving you, and nothing will satisfy me now but the full fruition of that love. Gertie, you do love me; tell me that you do, and not shrink away from me as you are trying to do.” He wound his arm around her, and drew her closely to him, while with a shudder she cried: “Oh, Godfrey, don’t ask me; take the words back, please, and do not torture me so cruelly. I cannot be your wife. I cannot. It must never be,—never. I have given my solemn promise, and I must keep it.” Then he released her, and springing to his feet, exclaimed: “Your promise, Gertie! Your promise! What do you mean? Has any other man dared talk to you of love? Has Tom Barton——” She saw that he misunderstood her, and said to him: “No, Godfrey, it is not that. I am not promised in that way, but for gratitude, for honor. Your father asked it of me.” “My father? What do you mean?” Godfrey said, resuming his seat beside her, and growing very indignant and very white about the lips when Gertie told him what she meant, and that she would not break her vow. Nothing he could say to her moved her in the least. She had promised and she should keep her word, and he must go back to Alice, who would forgive him.