"And is that the arrangement?" said he rather roughly. "Are we to play at dog in the manger? He is not to marry you himself, but he will not let any other man marry you?" "Surely he has some right to consideration," she said. "Well, Wenna," said he, "if you've made up your mind, there's no more to be said; but I think you are needlessly cruel." "You won't say that, just as we are parting," she said in a low voice. "Do you think it is nothing to me?" He looked at her for a moment with a great sadness and compunction in his eyes; then, moved by an uncontrollable impulse, he caught her in his arms and kissed her on the lips. "Now," said he, with his face white as death, "tell me that you will never marry any other man as long as you live." "Yes, I will say that," she said to him in a low voice and with a face as white as his own. "Swear it, then." "I have said that I will never marry any other man than you," she said, "and that is enough--for me. But as for you, why must you go away thinking of such things? You will see some day what madness it would have been; you will come some day and thank me for having told you so; and then--and then--if anything should be mentioned about what I said just now, you will laugh at the old, half-forgotten joke." Well, there was no laughing at the joke just then, for the girl burst into tears, and in the midst of that she hastily pressed his hand and hurried away. He watched her go round the rocks, to the cleft leading down to the harbor. There she was rejoined by her sister, and the two of them went slowly along the path of broken slate, with the green hill above, the blue water below, and the fair sunshine all around them. Many a time he recalled afterward--and always with an increasing weight at his heart--how sombre seemed to him that bright October day and the picturesque opening of the coast leading in to Eglosilyan. For it was the last glimpse of Wenna Rosewarne that he was to have for many a day, and a sadder picture was never treasured up in a man's memory. "Oh, Wenna, what have you said to him that you tremble so?" Mabyn asked. "I have bid him good-bye--that is all." "Not for always?" "Yes, for always." "And he is going away again, then?" "Yes, as a young man should. Why should he stop here to make himself wretched over impossible fancies? He will go out into the world, and he has splendid health and spirits, and he will forget all this." "And you--you are anxious to forget it all too?" "Would it not be better? What good can come of dreaming? Well, I have plenty of work to do: that is well." Mabyn was very much inclined to cry: all her beautiful visions of the future happiness of her sister had been rudely dispelled--all her schemes and machinations had gone for nothing. There only remained to her, in the way of consolation, the fact that Wenna still wore the sapphire ring that Harry Trelyon had sent her.