'Dear Cardie, let there be full confidence between us; you see you have unwittingly betrayed yourself.' 'Yes, I have betrayed myself,' he muttered with increasing agitation; 'what a fool you must think me, Aunt Milly, and all because I could not put a question quietly; but I was not prepared for your answer; what a consummate----' 'Hush, don't call yourself names. I knew your secret long ago, Cardie. I knew what friends you and Ethel Trelawny were.' A boyish flush suffused his face. 'Ethel is very fond of her old playmate.' He winced as though with sudden pain. 'Ah, that is just it, Aunt Milly; she is fond of me and nothing else.' 'I like her name for you, Coeur-de-Lion, it sounds so musical from her lips; you are her friend, Richard; she trusts you implicitly.' 'I believe--I hope she does;' but drawing his hand again before his eyes, 'I am too young, Aunt Milly. I was only one-and-twenty last month.' 'True, and Sir Robert was nearly fifty; she refused a fine estate there.' 'Was her father angry with her?' 'Not so terribly incensed as he was about Mr. Cathcart the year before. Mr. Cathcart had double his fortune and was a young, good-looking man. I was almost afraid that in her misery she should be driven to marry him.' 'He has no right to persecute her so; why should he be so anxious to get rid of his only child?' 'That is what we all say. Poor Ethel, hers is no light cross. I am thankful she is beginning to take it patiently; the loss of a father's love must be dreadful, and hers is a proud spirit.' 'But not now; you said yourself, Aunt Milly, how nobly she behaved in that last affair.' 'True,' continued Mildred in a sorrowful tone; 'all the more that she was inclined to succumb to a momentary fascination; but I am certain that with all his intellect Mr. Cathcart would have been a most undesirable husband for her; Sir Robert Ferrers is far preferable.' 'Aunt Milly!' 'Yes, Richard, and I told her so; but her only answer was that she would not marry where she could not love. I am afraid this will widen the breach between her and her father; her last letter was very sad.' 'It is tyranny, downright persecution; how dares he. Oh, Aunt Milly!' in a tone of deep despondency, 'if I were only ten years older.' 'I am afraid you are very young, Cardie. I wish you had not set your heart on this.' 'Yes, we are too much of an age; but she need not fear, I am older in everything than she; there is nothing boyish about me, is there, Aunt Milly?' 'Not in your love for Ethel, I am afraid; but, Cardie, what would her father say if he knew it?' 'He will know it some day. Look here, Aunt Milly, I am one-and-twenty now, and I have loved Ethel, Miss Trelawny I mean, since I was a boy of twelve; people may laugh, but I felt for my old playmate something of what I feel now. She was always different from any one else in my eyes. I remember telling my mother when I was only ten that Ethel should be my wife.' 'But, Richard----'