"No lady need fear persecution from me. Forgive my repeating to you, Mistress Carew, that I loved you dearly, and believed you cared for me in return." "I know it," she said, and but for a choking sensation in her throat would have added something more. "I have deceived myself strangely, it seems," he continued, trying to meet her eyes, which she kept averted from his face. "Nevertheless, I think I am entitled to demand the cause of this sudden dismissal. I should not like to lose my _respect_ for you, Mistress Carew, even though I must try to forget my own unreasonable love." Still that catching in the throat. She loosened the black velvet band round her neck, before she could answer. "Master Garnet," she said, "it is not good for you to be here. You ought never to have come. I blame myself you have not sooner gone away. Believe me, the air of Porlock means death. If you--you ever cared for me, as you say, depart at once, to-day, this very hour, and put the blue sea between us, for _my_ sake!" "For _your_ sake?" This was surely a new experience of the sex, thought John Garnet; was ever woman so incomprehensible? Was ever woman so lovely, and so beloved? "For my sake," she repeated, and the blue eyes met his own without flinching. "Master Garnet, I am going to be married, and your presence here conduces neither to my happiness nor your own." "Married? Tell me at least the name of the man you have chosen." There was no bitterness in his tone. Only a deep sorrow and a kindly interest that told of unselfish affection, wounded but not destroyed. "Parson Gale," she answered, speaking very fast and glancing wildly about her. "Does it surprise you? Is it strange? Does it not seem like a jest?" She burst into a painful laugh, shrill, harsh, and by no means suggestive of mirth. He looked anxiously in her face, wondering more and more. "Mistress Carew," he said, in a grave earnest voice, "I pray you may be happy!" and offered his hand. She caught it in both her own, with a low, sobbing cry, pressed it to her heart, her lips, her eyes now streaming with tears, flung it from her in hysteric violence, and rushed out of his presence, leaving John Garnet utterly bewildered and dismayed. Even now he could not bring himself to admit that all was over between them, though wholly unable to account for his sweetheart's inexplicable conduct, and completely at a loss what to think, and what to believe. Later in the day, wandering restlessly to and fro, unwilling to leave its vicinity, he observed Parson Gale ride through the village of Porlock, dismount at old Carew's door, tie his horse there by the bridle, and enter the house without farther ceremony. Then, for the first time in his life, he felt that keen pang of jealousy, which is at once the test, and the punishment of love.