"Look here," said Tom; "you are a good soul, and have been very kind to me, but you mustn't talk to me in this way, for I'm engaged to Margaret, and I mean to marry her." "You'll pay dearly for it if you do." She stopped a minute, then she lowered her voice, but she was becoming excited; after all, there was some interest left in the situation, and she offered up her child's dignity to its dramatic possibility. "There was something more in the telegram than I have told you," she said. "You are killing Lena, and not behaving as an honorable gentleman." "What do you mean?" he asked, bewildered, but remembering uncomfortably Lena's manner of yesterday. "I mean," said Mrs. Lakeman, indignantly--for it was a theory of hers that a claim was always stronger than a plea, and gained more consideration--"that you have no right to marry Margaret Vincent, or anybody else. I mean that you have made my child love you, that you are all the world to her, and you made her believe that she was all the world to you." "We have never been anything but friends!" He was aghast. "Outwardly. At heart you have been lovers, and you can't deny it. She has given you the one love of her life, dear"--Mrs. Lakeman was becoming sentimental--"and I never dreamed that you had not given her yours. You can go back to Margaret Vincent, if you like, but you have killed my child--my one, only child. You must see how ill she looks, how changed she is." "But this is ghastly," he said; "I'm not a bit in love with Lena. I never cared for any one in that way but Margaret, and I want to marry her." "Go and marry her," Mrs. Lakeman answered, in a low voice; "Lena will not be alive to see it. Do you suppose that I would give away my own child's secret, or bring myself to speak to you as I'm doing now, if it were not a case of life and death?" She said the last words with a thrill. He looked at her in despair. "What are you going to do?" she asked, after a pause. He turned away and followed the course of the stream with his eyes as it rushed through the glen. This was very awkward, he thought, but for the life of him he didn't believe in it. "You have been very kind to me," he said; "but it's no good not telling the truth about a thing of this sort--I couldn't marry Lena. I'm very fond of her, but she isn't the kind of girl that I could fall in love with; she flops about and you never know where you have her, and as for her being desperately in love with me, why, I don't believe it. We should worry each other to death if we were married; besides, I mean to marry Margaret Vincent." "If the grocer hasn't stolen a march on you." "Look here," he answered, turning very red, "if you say that sort of thing we shall quarrel." "I don't care," she answered, defiantly; "if you can't behave like a gentleman, it doesn't matter whether we quarrel or not." "You know," he said, "I don't believe in this business--I mean in Lena's being in love with me."