"After your promise. I have a duty to my helpless father, Tom, my lad, and I should be playing a very dishonourable part if I took advantage of his position, knowing what I do of his wishes, to arrange a meeting between you and my sister. That was a love-sick boy speaking, not the Queen's officer--the man whose honour is beyond reproach." "I suppose you are right," said Beck, after a pause. "You know I am." "Let me see her for a moment, though." "No." "I know you are right--just to say `good-bye' before you--just to touch her hand." "No, my lad. Say good-bye to me, and I'll tell her you love her truly, and that you have gone off to your duty like a man--an officer and a gentleman. That you have exacted no promise from her, and that you have taken the advice of her brother--a man who loves you both and will help you to the end. There, I must go back to my father's room. Good-bye." "O Neil," groaned the young sailor; "this is all so hard and business-like. Everything goes easily for you. You don't know what love is." A spasm contracted Neil's features for a few moments, but he smiled sadly directly after. "Perhaps not," he said. "Who knows? There, business-like or not, you know I am doing my duty and you have to do yours. Come, sailor, I shall begin to quote Shakespeare to you. `Aboard, for shame; the wind sits in the shoulder of your sail, and you are staid for.'" "But it is so hard, Neil." "Life's duties are hard, man; but we men must do them at any cost. Come, good-bye, and old Shakespeare again--the end of the old man's speech: `To thine own self be true'--and you will be true to the girl you wish to make your wife. Good-bye." Neil held out his hand, but it remained untouched for the full space of a minute before it was seized and crushed heavily between two nervous sets of fingers, while the young man's eyes gazed fixedly in his. Then it was dashed aside. Beck swung himself round and dashed off across the park as hard as he could go, without trusting himself to look back. CHAPTER EIGHT. CONFLICTING EMOTIONS. "Poor fellow!" said Neil to himself; "and the dad prefers that hunting, racing baronet to him for a son-in-law! Why it would break little Bel's heart." He stood watching till Beck passed in among the trees, expecting to the last to see him turn and wave his hand. "No; gone," he said. "Well, I must fight their battle--when the time comes--but it is quite another battle now." As he thought this he heard the clattering of hoofs, and hastened his steps so as to get indoors before his brother rode out of the stable yard with the Lydon sisters, and a guilty feeling sent the blood into his pale cheeks. But he did not check his steps; he rather hastened them.