She was not a pretty woman. She had the charms that belong to symmetry of form, and grace of manner and movement. But few of those who were struck at once by Nelly Channell's beauty would have noticed Eve. They would have failed to see the noble shape of that small head, and the play of light and shade on the careworn young face. Yet as Morgan sat watching her, he was stung by the sharpness of jealous agony. Had some man wooed this girl, and been an accepted lover? He could not endure the idea that those chance words of hers had conjured up. The grand passion of his life was revealed to him in a moment. He knew what he felt towards Eve, and knew, too, that this was what he ought to have felt towards another. This was love. It was but a poor counterfeit thereof that he had given to Nelly. "Some people think nothing of breaking a promise," she continued, still looking out into the street. "Years ago, when I was a child, and my father was a prosperous man, his friend Mr. Myrtle came to him in sore need of money. My father lent him three thousand pounds. The sum was lent without security, and it was never repaid." Morgan breathed more freely; but he thought of Nelly's legacy. "When my father felt himself to be dying," Eve went on, "he wrote to Mr. Myrtle, reminding him once more of the debt. It was for my sake that he did this, knowing that I should be left quite friendless, and almost penniless. And Mr. Myrtle promised to leave me three thousand pounds in his will. He died last year, Mr. Foster, but there was no legacy for me." Morgan's words of sympathy sounded flat and commonplace. He was too much overcome with shame to be conscious of what he was saying. It was almost a relief when his old father returned from church and broke up the _tête-à-tête_. When Mrs. Foster was well enough to move from her bed to a couch, the curate bethought him of returning to Huntsdean. He did not dare to think much of all that awaited him there. He had lived a lifetime in the space of a few weeks, and the village and its associations looked unreal and far away. At this time shame was his dominant feeling. He forgot to pity himself for the blunder that he had made--he thought only of his involuntary treachery. He did not dream of making any confession to Nelly; she should be no sufferer through this dreadful mistake of his. And he wrote her as lover-like a letter as he could frame, telling her that he was coming home in a few days. CHAPTER XV. A CONFESSION OVERHEARD. It was the afternoon of Morgan's last day in Warwickshire. He sat by his mother's couch, holding her thin hand in his, and wishing, with all his heart, that she were the only woman in the world who had any claim upon him. She looked at him with a long earnest look; once or twice her lips opened, but some moments went by before she spoke.