Neva’s heart thrilled under this ardent and impassioned declaration as under an angel’s touch. Then a leaden pall seemed to descend upon her soul, and her face grew white, as she faltered: “It cannot be, Arthur.” Lord Towyn shivered with sudden pain. “You--you are not promised to another, Neva?” “N-no!” “You love another then?” “Oh, no, no!” “It is that I have startled you by my premature confession, Neva?” he cried tremulously. “Dolt that I am! I have thought and dreamed of you so much, that I had forgotten how perfect a stranger I must seem to you after all these years of separation. You cannot take up the old life where we dropped it. I was foolish to have expected it. Do not let my undue haste prejudice you against me. It will not, Neva?” “No, Arthur,” answered the girl lowly and hesitatingly. “And you will give me a chance to reprieve my error?” he demanded eagerly. “Perhaps in time you may grow to love me, Neva--” “Arthur,” said the young girl, nerving herself to tell him of her father’s supposed last wishes, “I have something to say to you. Papa--” Her voice died out in a half sob. “Well, darling?” said the young earl, bending nearer to her, his eyes burning with the love that filled his being. “What of Sir Harold? Did you fancy that he would not have approved of our love?” Neva nodded a dumb assent. “And if Sir Harold had approved, do you think you could learn to love me?” whispered the young earl softly, his eager breath fanning the girl’s cheek. Neva’s silence was interpreted as a favorable answer. “Before my father died,” said Lord Towyn gently, “he told me that it had long been his wish and that of Sir Harold to unite the two families in our marriage. Sir Harold was in India at the time of my father’s death, and was not likely, at that distance from home, to have contracted an aversion to me, or to have formed other plans for your future. You see, I am right, Neva, and now I claim to be considered as your suitor. May it not be?” “Oh, Arthur,” the girl murmured, sorely perplexed, “I--” The story trembled on her lips, but she did not give utterance to it, for at that critical moment Rufus Black entered the conservatory, and came up the flower-bordered aisle, with an unmistakable displeasure upon his melancholy face. Neva started guiltily at his approach, as if she had been wronging him or her dead father in listening to Lord Towyn’s avowals of love. But although she moved away from the young earl, she paused under a tropical rose-tree, and began to gather roses, and her two suitors hovered about her, each recognizing in the other a rival. They were presently joined by Neva’s third lover, Craven Black. The last-named looked moodily and jealously at his son and the young earl, and devoted himself so closely to the heiress that, with a feeling of annoyance, Neva presently proposed a return to the drawing-room.