Fear, indignation, despair were in his tone. He caught hold of Suzette's arm, and drew her towards him, looking searchingly at the pale, tear-stained face; but she shrank from his grasp, and sank on her knees at his feet. "It is my miserable secret--that must be told at last. I have tried--I have hoped--I honour--I respect you--Allan. But our hearts are not our own; we cannot guide or govern their impulses. My heart is weighed down with shame and misery, but it is empty of love. I cannot love you as your wife should. If I keep my word, I shall be a miserable woman." "You shall not be that," he said sternly--"not to make me the happiest man in creation. But don't you think," with chilling deliberation, "this tragedy might have been acted a little earlier? It seems to me that you have kept your secret over carefully." "I have been weak, Allan, hopelessly, miserably weak-minded. I tried to do what was best. I did not want to disappoint you----" "Disappoint me? Why, you have fooled me from the first! Disappoint me? Why, I have built the whole fabric of my future life upon this rotten foundation! I was to be happy because of your love; my days and years were to flow sweetly by in a paradise of domestic peace, blest by your love. And all the time there was no such thing. You did not love me; you had never loved me; you were only trying to love me; and the hopelessness of the endeavour is brought home to you now--at this eleventh hour--three weeks before our wedding-day. Suzette, Suzette, never was woman's cruelty crueller than this of yours!" She was in floods of tears at his feet, her head drooping till her brow almost touched the ground. He left her kneeling there, and rushed away to the garden to hide his own tears--the tears of which his manhood was ashamed, the passionate sobs, the wild hysterical weeping of the sex that seldom weeps. He found a shelter and a hiding-place in an angle of the garden, where there was a side walk shut in by close-cropped cypress walls, and here Mrs. Wornock found him presently, sitting on a marble bench, with his elbows on his knees, his face hidden in his hands. She seated herself at his side, and laid her hand gently on his. "Allan, dear Allan, I am so sorry for you," she said softly. "I am very sorry for myself. I don't seem to need anybody's pity. I think I can do all the grieving." "Ah, that is the worst of it. Nobody's sympathy can help you." "Not yours," he answered almost savagely; "for, at heart, you must be glad. My dismissal makes room for some one else--some one whose interests are dearer to you than mine could ever be."