"George!--I love you with all my heart. I have always loved you,--I could not help myself. That, I think, is why I quarrelled with you so,--at first. But I was afraid that my loving would avail me little and would probably cause you pain, for I was pledged to marry a man I did not love; and, because of that pledge, I was not free to give my love to any other man. "George!--that man is dead now. He died a month ago in a street riot with some natives in Cairo. "All his sins are covered up with him," she sighed. "And, after all, maybe Harry Brammerton was not----" "Harry Brammerton!--" I cried, springing up in a tremble of excitement. "My God! Oh, my God! I thought,--I,--I understood,--I--I--oh, God!" I clutched at the table for support as the awful truth began to dawn on me. Mary rose in alarm. "Why! What is it? What have I said? George,--didn't you know? Didn't I tell you before? You have heard of him?--you are acquainted with him,--Viscount Harry Brammerton--" "Oh! Mary, Mary," I cried huskily, "please,--please do not go on. It is more than I can bear now. "I didn't know. I,--I am that man's brother. I am George Brammerton." She stood ever so quietly. "You!--You!" she whispered. And that was all. Thus we stood,--stricken,--speechless,--under the cloud of the unexpected, the almost impossible that had come upon us. Yet Mary, or rather Rosemary, was the first to regain her composure. Kindly, sweetly, she came over to me and placed her hands on my shoulders. Her brown eyes were wells of sympathy and tenderness. "George,--we each must fight this out alone. Come back to me in the morning. I shall be waiting for you then." And I left her. But it seemed to me as if the morning would never come. Unable to bear the burden of my thoughts longer amid the confines of my rooms, I went out at last into the moonlight, to wait the coming of the dawn. As I stood out on the cliffs,--where old Jake Meaghan so often used to sit listening to Mary's music,--she came to me; fairylike, white-robed, all tenderness, all softness and palpitating womanliness. "George,--my George," she whispered, "I could not wait till morning either.--And why should we wait, when my father's and your father's pledge, the vow they made for you and for me,--although we have not known it till now,--need not be broken after all." I caught her up and kissed her lips, her eyes, her hair,--again and again,--until she gasped, thinking I should never cease. With our arms around each other, we waited on the cliffs for the sunrise. We watched it come up in all its rosy loveliness, paling the dying moon and setting the waters of the Bay ablaze. "And we must leave all this, my Lady Rosemary?" I said, with a sigh of regret.