He rose in his earnestness and came nearer her. His tall, strong figure shaken with emotion, his handsome face quivering with the strength of his conflicting feelings. Marion was far too tender of heart to tantalize or try him unnecessarily. She too rose and stood beside him. What a slight, fragile creature she seemed, and yet probably the stronger of the two in much that constitutes real strength of nature! She spoke very quietly and calmly. “Dear Mr. Baldwin,” she said, “I am more grieved, more deeply pained than I can possibly put in words, to know that I have caused you suffering. I was rough and hasty that day, but I have changed since then. I will not ask you to stay near me if it is painful to you. But you must decide for yourself after hearing what I want to tell you.” Then in a few simple words, she sketched for him the history of her life and its great disappointment. She entered into no particulars. At the end of her narration Geoffrey was perfectly ignorant as to when and where all this had happened. Nor did he in the least care to know. He was conscious only of the one great central fact. Marion, his Marion, for whom he would have died, had loved some one else as he loved her. It was a great blow to him, for it was altogether unexpected. The words in which she had before repulsed him, had not to him, as to Veronica’s quicker perception, told of anything of this sort. In his simplicity he had understood them only as referring, with the exaggeration of youth, to her father’s death and the many troubles consequent upon it. He had intended no special allusion when he said something about at the probability of her before long choosing another guardian. He had perfectly understood that she did not care for him in any but a friendly way; but it had never struck him that already her affections had been elsewhere bestowed. She was so young! And Harry had all but told him how cordially he approved of the idea, and had tacitly encouraged him in his suit. For some minutes Geoffrey made no reply. He stood leaning on the chair from which Marion had lately risen, thinking deeply, doing his honest best to see light through this matter. Then the same question rose to his lips as had occurred to Miss Veronica. “Forgive me,” he said, “but tell me one thing. This man whom you have spoken of to me—do you still love him, Marion? I do not ask or expect you to say you could ever care for me as you have done for him. That, I understand would be impossible. Only to some extent I must know my own chance. So tell me, my poor darling, do you still love him?” And Marion the second time made the answer, “As I know myself I do not love him now.” Then said Geoffrey—