"I will try to keep out of your way," she answers, meekly. "For God's sake, do! It is the most merciful thing that you can do for both of us." "I would leave this place to-day, if I could," she answers, humbly raising her wistful, deprecating eyes to his; "but I cannot. My daily bread is here--yours is not. Why cannot you go?" He hesitates. "I ought, I suppose," he answers, doubtfully. "I will, if you wish it." "It is as _you_ wish," she replies. Footmen are passing to and fro, through the hall, busy with preparations for dinner; any moment Mr. Gerard's blue-and-white angel may come sweeping downstairs and surprise them. "I have not congratulated you yet, Mr. Gerard," Esther says, timidly. "Congratulated me!--what upon?" he asks, absently, staring vacantly at her. "Upon your engagement to Miss Blessington." A shade crosses his face. "Oh yes, to be sure! I had forgotten. Thanks! you are very good, I'm sure." "I hope you will be very happy--_quite_ happy." "Thanks. Wish that I may be Prime Minister, or Commander-in-Chief, or something equally probable, while you are about it," he says, sardonically. "I wish you to be happy," she repeats, gently, "and I hope that is not improbable." "Such a wish in your mouth is something like a butcher with his knife at its throat wishing a sheep a long life!" A guilty sense of hypocrisy in wishing him happy whom, less than forty-eight hours ago, she had been congratulating herself on his certain misery, keeps her dumb. "Why could not you have sent me word that you were here, and I would have kept away?" he asks, flashing angrily upon her. "I asked Miss Blessington to tell you, but she forgot." He turns away with a muttered exclamation, not benedictory towards his betrothed, between his teeth. "I will try to be as little annoyance to you as I can," says the poor child, in bitter mortification. "You will be out hunting most of the day, I daresay, and, except when I am waiting upon either Mr. and Mrs. Blessington, I am not often downstairs." He takes no notice of her submissive speech, but stands, with his eyes moodily downcast, upon the white stone of the cold carpetless stairs. "Believe me, I would go away, if I could," she says, piteously. "I did not wish to be in your way; but I had nowhere to go to." A shade of pity softens his stern face. "Are they kind to you?" he asks abruptly. "Yes--oh yes--quite kind." "And what, in God's name," he says, slowly, as if the question were forced from him against his will, by the slender fragility of her figure, by the pallid delicacy of her face--"And what, in God's name, can have induced your friends to allow you to accept such a situation, for which you are about as well fitted as I for the archbishopric of Canterbury?" "I have not many friends, and I did not ask the advice of the few I have." "They ought to have given it unasked," he says, gruffly. "So they did, but I did not take it."