"I am sorry--I am sorry!" she cried. "Oh, I hoped 'twas but a fancy, and that you would not speak! I do not love you--" "Let me wait," said Cary, after a pause. "I said that I was speaking too soon. Let me wait--let me prove to you. Your heart may turn." She shook her head. "It will not change." "Is there," asked Cary, in a low voice, "is there another before me?" She looked at him strangely. "You have no right to question me. I do not think that I shall ever marry. For you, you will live long and be happy. You deserve happiness. If I have wounded you, may it soon heal! Forget this night, and me." "Forget!" said Cary. "I am not so lightly made! But neither will I despair. I will wait. If there is no man before me, I will win you yet! There is little reason, God knows, why you should care for me, but I shall strive to make that reason greater!" "There is reason," answered Jacqueline. "I think highly, highly of you! You would make a woman happy;--all her life she would travel a sunny road! I prize your friendship--I am loth to lose it. But as for me,"--she locked her hands against her breast,--"there is that within me that cries, _The shadowed road!--the shadowed road!"_ She rose, and Cary rose with her. "Forgive me," she said. "Is it not cruel that we hurt each other so? Forgive--forget." "I would forgive you," he answered, with emotion, "the suffering and the sorrow of a thousand lives. But forget you--never! I'll love you well and I'll love you long. Nor will I despair. To-night is dark, but the sun may shine to-morrow. Think of me as of one who will love you to the end." He took her hand and kissed it, then stood aside, saying, "I will not face the lights quite yet." She passed into the hail and up the stairway, and he turned and went down the porch steps into the May night. CHAPTER IX EXPOSTULATION The next morning Ludwell Cary rose early, ordered his horse, and opened the door of his brother's room. "Fair," he said, as the younger Cary sat up in bed, with a nightcap wonderfully askew upon his handsome head, "I am off for Greenwood. Make my excuses, will you, to Colonel Churchill and the ladies? I will not be back till supper-time." He turned to leave the room. "And Fair--if you have anything to say to Miss Dandridge, this is the shepherd's hour. We go home to-morrow." "What the Devil?"--began the younger Cary. "No, not the Devil," said the other, with a twist of the lip half humorous, half piteous. "Just woman."