'I knew _another_ Laura, and she--but let me not think of her at this moment when I feel that I love you with a passion that I have sought in vain to overcome.' 'Why?' she asked, impetuously. 'Because there are hopeless obstacles between us.' '_I_ have none,' was her somewhat pointed reply. 'But I have,' said he, while bead-drops coursed from his temples; and she regarded him curiously through her veil, and said, 'Then you should never have addressed me at all in the language of a lover. I had good reason to suspect something of this kind,' she continued, in a tone of severity. 'And hence it was that you always spoke so enigmatically to me.' 'Perhaps.' 'As one who would judge of a man by his past history rather than by his capacity for good in the future, and so judged me harshly.' He stooped from his saddle, and suddenly kissed her gloved hand. As he did so she heard him whisper, as if to himself, 'My darling--my darling--without destroying your honour and my own, I can hope for no nearer caress. Pardon me,' he added, aloud. When he raised his head, she saw that his face was deadly pale; but again the smile of triumph glittered in her half-closed hazel eyes as she merely said, 'Captain Dalton, you have all the gallantry of a Spaniard, and seem inclined to pass the _rôle_ of Platonic affection I accorded to you; but you must pardon me if I mean resolutely to live in my past.' 'We cannot--ought not to live for the dead alone,' said Dalton. 'It is said that we bury our dead out of our sight, and may try to forget them, otherwise the world would not go on as it does. We may bury our dead--true, but memory remains.' 'How she must have loved that fellow Trelawney,' thought Dalton, with jealousy and sorrow. 'May there not be kindred souls that often meet too late?' she asked. 'And you apply this to yourself and me?' 'Yes.' 'I always thought that such ideas of kindred thought and passionate enthusiasm occurred only in youth, and were the result of propinquity and daily intercourse.' 'How coldly you respond to me!' 'After the mysterious _obstacle_ you so openly referred to, what would you have me do or say?' she asked, with a certain hauteur of tone, and then gave one of her merry little laughs. Dalton could not help thinking that the alternate hauteur and mirth of the handsome widow at his grave, solemn, and earnest love-making were--to say the least of them--exceedingly ill-timed, while her pretty apparent indifference to the strength of the passion that filled his soul, especially when on the eve of his departure to a distant land, piqued and exasperated him.