"Is it an acquaintance of mine too?" "About the most intimate you have, I should say: yourself, in fact!" "Is that news?" she asks, trying to smile. "I _am_ going to be married, am not I, to you?" "I am not aware that my name is--Brandon," he answers, coldly, while his sorrowful, fierce eyes go through her heart like poisoned arrows. She turns her head aside and groans. A great vague darkness blots out the broad moon, and the stars' thick cohorts; the bright water beside her grows black as hell's sluggish rivers. He had not known how much he had been buoyed up by hope till that mute gesture of hers bid him despair. "It's true, then?" he asks in a voice of sharp rage and anguish, catching hold of the white wonder of her arm, on which his fingers, unwittingly cruel, leave crimson prints. "Is _what_ true?" she asks, faintly, trying for yet a little longer to stave off Fate, to push away Nemesis, with her weak woman-fingers. "That you are--God! am I choking?--engaged to Brandon?" "I was once," she falters under her breath. "How long ago?" "When first I came here." "And since then you have written to break it off?" he asks, while a tone of joyful hope vibrates in his deep voice. "No, I have not," she answers, in a frightened whisper. St. John's face gathers blackness. "I am to understand, then," he resumes, in a constrained voice, out of which the man's strong will keeps the pent passion from bursting forth, "that you belonged to him at the time when I kept you out of bed one night to listen to an interesting chapter in my own autobiography?" "Yes." "And when, in reply to my inquiries, you denied having any connection beyond common acquaintance with--with him?" "Yes." "And when you were good enough to overlook all trifling obstacles, and to consent to marry me?" "Yes." The little catechism ended, the last cobweb of doubt torn away, they stand dumb. Esther's guilty head sinks down on her breast as a flower's head sinks overladen with rain. Suddenly she looks up and stretches out her arms. "Speak to me!" she says, huskily. "Curse me! strike me! call me some bad name--only speak!" "I wish to God you were a man!" he answers, in a hard, low voice; while his straight brows draw together into one dark line across his face, and his lips look white and thin under his moustache. "That you might _kill_ me!" she says, incoherent with excitement. "Well, kill me now! If revenge is so pleasant to you, I give you leave!" "Let us have no heroics, please," says he, contemptuously; "you don't appear to be aware that it is not the fashion for English gentlemen to murder women who make fools of them. It may be a sensible practice, but it is at present confined to the _tiers état_." Having spoken, he makes a slight movement to depart. "Are you going to give me up?" she cries, smiting her hands together, and forgetting in her great dismay to reflect whether the remonstrance accorded well with her dignity or not.