His eyes sought hers eagerly, passionately. There was no sign in her face of the woman from whose hands had fluttered those white roses through the darkness into his keeping. Her head was uplifted, her eyes cold--even it seemed to him that her delicate lips were slightly curled. His heart sank like lead. "You see, after all, I am right," he cried bitterly. "You are angry with me, you will not let me speak. You think I am mad because I have dared to dream of you as the one hope of my life." "No," she answered, "I am not angry with you. I hope that you will never allude to this again, so I will tell you something. The difference of rank between us counts for nothing. You are young, and you have gifts which will make you, when you choose, willingly accepted among any class of people with whom you care to spend your days. But, nevertheless, I consider what you were about to say to me presumption." He started quickly. They were face to face now upon the edge of the lawn. Lady Malingcourt had drawn herself up, and a bright spot of color burned in her cheeks. "That you are a mechanic," she said, "makes you, to be candid, more interesting to me. Nothing in your circumstances would have made your feeling toward me anything but an honor. It is as a man that you fail. Your standard of life is one which I could not possibly accept. I presume that it comes from your bringing up, so I do not wish to say anything more about it. Only I beg you to consider what I have said as final, and to do me the favor of thinking no longer of what must remain forever absolutely--impossible." She swept past him and entered the house. He remained for a moment nerveless and tongue-tied. The lash of her bitter words stupefied him. What had he done?--wherein had he so greatly failed? After all, what did it matter? About him lay the fragments of that wonderful dream which had made life so sweet to him. Nothing could ever reëstablish it. He staggered out of the gate, and walked blindly away. The man's passion found kinship with the storm which broke suddenly over his head. The thunder clouds rolled up from the horizon, and the lightning shone around him with a yellow glare. Below him the tree tops and the young corn were bent by a rushing wind--even the cattle in the fields crept away to shelter. The sky above grew black, forked lightning now glittered from east to west, writing its lurid message to the trembling earth. He sat on a high rock bareheaded, and the rain, falling now in sheets, drenched him through and through.