"That is a way everybody has of saying smooth things. Well, mother, I am no longer a soldier. India was pleasant enough--there was a smack of adventure, a possibility of fighting--but I could not have endured garrison life in an English town. I would rather mope at home." "Why should you mope, Geoff?" "Yes, why? I am free to go east, west, north, and south. I suppose there need be no moping now?" "But you will be often at home, won't you, dear? Or else I shall be no gainer by your leaving the army." "Yes, I will be here as often, and as much as--as I can bear it." He had risen from the breakfast-table, and was walking up and down the room, with that light careless step of his which seemed in perfect harmony with his tall slim figure. He was very pale, and his eyes were brighter than usual, and there was a quick restlessness in the smile that flashed across his face now and then. "Do I bore you so much, Geoffrey?" his mother asked, with a wounded look. "You bore me? No, no, no! Oh, surely you know how the land lies. Surely this fever cannot have been eating up my heart and my strength all this time without your eyes seeing, and your heart sympathizing. You _must_ know that I love her." "I feared as much, my poor Geoffrey." No name had been spoken; yet mother and son understood each other. "You feared! Great God, why should it be a reason for fear? Here am I, young, rich, my own master--and here is she as free as she is fair--free to be my wife to-morrow, except for this tie which is no tie--a foolish engagement to a man she never loved." "Has she told you that?" "Not she. Her lips are locked by an over-strained sense of honour. She will marry a man for whom she doesn't care a straw. She will be miserable all her life, or at best she will have missed happiness, and on her deathbed she will boast to her parish priest, 'I kept my word.' Poor pretty Puritan! She thinks it virtue to break my heart and grieve her own." "You have told her of your love, Geoffrey?" "Yes." "That was dishonourable." "No more than it was to love her. I am a lump of dishonour; I am made up of lies; but if she had an ounce of pluck, there need be no more falsehood. She has only to tell him the truth, the sad simple truth. 'I never loved you. I have let myself be persuaded into an engagement, but I never loved you.'" "That would break Allan's heart." "It would be bad to bear, no doubt, but not so bad as the gradual revelation that must come upon him in the years after marriage. She may be able to deceive him now--to delude him with the idea that she loves him; but how about the long winter evenings by their own fireside, and the dull nights when the rain is on the roof? A woman may hide her want of love before marriage; but, by Heaven, she can't hide it after! God help him when he finds that he has a victim, and not a wife!" "Poor Allan! But how do you know she does not care for him--or that she cares for you?"