The girl was looking away from him, still sitting very upright, and drinking in his words with an intent expression on her face. At last she turned her head slowly, and her eyes, mournful and earnest, gazed full into those of the young man, who had poured out his appeal with passionate excitement, and now sat, flushed and eager, awaiting her answer. “Can you wait for my reply till to-morrow?” she asked, with a curiously searching expression. “Why to-morrow? What would you know to-morrow that you don’t know to-night?” “You are going to see the girl to-night!” said Ella, with a sudden inspiration. “If you will not have me--yes. It is a promise. If you, now that you know everything, will take me, I hold myself absolved from a promise to another woman, and before Heaven I swear that you will have nothing more to fear; I will never see her again. Only a woman can drive another woman out of a man’s head. Ella, no one has ever crept so near to my heart as you. Will you come right in?” If she had not cared for him so much, she would have said yes. But the tenderness she had long secretly felt, without owning it to herself, for the handsome young officer, made her timid. If she were to marry him, she, with the fierce depths of unsuspected passion she felt stirring at her heart, would adore him, would be at his mercy, bereft of the shield of sarcasm and reserve with which she could hide her weakness now. She knew that the feeling which brought him to her was not so strong as, though it was probably better than, that which impelled him away. She dared not risk so much on a single stroke. Yearning, doubt, fear, resolution, all passed so quickly through her mind that she had kept him waiting for his reply very few moments when she rose, and with a face as still and set as if she had not for a moment wavered, she said: “I can give you no answer now. If you are in the same mind a month hence, ask me again.” George gave a hard laugh as he too rose. “It will be too late,” he said coldly. “But I thank you for hearing me. Good-night.” He shook hands with her in a mechanical manner, not even noticing in his agitation the nervous pressure of her fingers. If he had looked again in her face he would have seen that she relented; as it was, he was at the other end of the room taking leave of her father and mother before she had time to realise the decisiveness of the step she had taken. Scourging herself with reproaches, remorseful, miserable, Ella Millard got little sleep that night. George Lauriston had hardly got half-a-dozen yards from the house when he heard Lord Florencecourt’s short, youthful step behind him, and a moment later the Colonel had slipped his arm through his, with a friendliness he showed to no one but his favourite. “Well, George, which of the two is it?” he asked in a much more genial tone than usual. “Which of the two!” repeated Lauriston vaguely.