"'Yet, cruel as the grave. Go, go, and come no more! But canst thou set my heart Just where it was before? "'Go, go, and come no more! Go leave me with thy tears, The only gift of thine That shall outlive the years.'" Kathleen's face was bent on her hand. Teddy heard a smothered sob, but he did not know with what terrible directness the words had gone to her heart. He believed that she was heart-whole and fancy-free. "It is too sad for you, is it not?" he exclaimed. "I will read you something brighter: "'They may talk of love in a cottage, And bowers of trellised vine, Of nature bewitchingly simple, And milkmaids half divine. * * * * * "'But give me a sly flirtation By the light of a chandelier-- With music to play in the pauses, And nobody very near.'" Kathleen actually gave a soft little laugh, for Teddy had read the lines with such gusto that he plainly betrayed how much the sentiment was to his mind. He started, flushed, then said, with his unvarying good nature: "Ah, how cruel! But never mind, so that I've made you feel brighter. Have I, Kathleen?" "You are too good to me," the girl answered, gratefully, moved by his kindness. "Too good! Ah, not one-half as good as I would like to be, if only you would let me," cried the young man, ardently. "Ah, Kathleen," he continued, impulsively, "do you remember how I used to love you--how I begged you to be my wife? My darling girl, I'm as fond of you as ever. Won't you try to love me? I would be the proudest boy in Christendom if you would marry me!" "Don't talk to me of love--please don't!" cried Kathleen, keeping her ardent lover at bay with two entreating white hands. "Well, I won't--at least not to-day; and I beg your pardon, dear, if I've intruded on your grief with my selfish love. But I thought--thought it might please you to know that there was one who loved you even better since your reverse of fortune than before," Teddy explained, humbly. "You are too good to me," she repeated as before, incoherently, touched by his devotion, and contrasting it in her mind with the treachery of that other one so dearly loved, so deeply false. "Then may I hope, Kathleen?" "Oh, no, no, no! I shall never love nor marry any one!" she answered, vehemently; but Teddy Darrell did not in the least believe her. He thought that all young girls were sure to love some day, and almost certain to marry. He determined to keep on hoping and trying to win this peerless beauty. Kathleen guessed what his thoughts were, and it made her very uneasy. "If I remain here with his cousin he will expect me to marry him," she thought. "I can not do it, for I do not love him. I must go away again;" and that very day she wrote to her mother's relatives in Richmond--the ones to whom she was going when overtaken by such an awful fate at Lincoln Station.