'I repeat to you, sir, that you must know me as Miss Erroll. I have been thoughtless in coming so far from my friends.' 'I am wrong in forcing my society upon you,' said he sadly; 'but that is a matter easily amended. In wronging you, as I did, dearest Annabelle, I wronged myself, and have suffered deeply accordingly.' 'Our meeting to-day has been--on both sides, unavoidable, Captain Fotheringhame. Let us return--if it is the best way to spare you further pain.' She spoke very calmly and deliberately, yet it cost her a terrible and painful effort. She knew that she loved him still; she felt even the eloquence of his silence, if such a term can be used, and now dared not lift her eyes to meet his gaze. 'Annabelle,' said he again, and took her hand in his; then a quiver passed over her delicate form, but the proud girl accorded no other sign as yet of the power he still possessed over her. 'Do you despise me--do you hate me?' 'Hate you--despise you?--why use language so strong? Oh no, no, Leslie, far from either--far from either!' she exclaimed, as if her heart would burst, and tears welled up in her dark blue eyes. Then the artificial barrier himself had raised between them seemed to give way, and he told her in the tenderest and most earnest of words how fondly he loved her still. 'Let us not cast away the chance of reconciliation that God in His great kindness has accorded us, Annabelle,' he urged, pathetically; 'as I loved you first, I love you now--nay, a thousandfold more, for I have learned the value of the heart with which I so cruelly trifled; and now, I pray you--I beg of you to be my wife, Annabelle, my wife!' She shook her head, and withdrew her hand. 'Is it to be thus?' he said sadly, but not reproachfully. She made no reply, but kept her long lashes down and her soft eyes fixed on the gravelled path. 'Let us be now, as we were then, in the sweet summer days, when the silver birches cast their shadows on the Tay; and let us forget my folly, my wickedness--all that estranged me from your loving heart and divided us, Annabelle, when that fair and artful woman of the world, Blanche Gordon, cast her meshes about me.' 'And must I believe that you have loved me all these years, and love me still?' she asked softly, and with infinite tenderness of tone. 'God alone knows how tenderly, deeply and reproachfully, Annabelle!' 'But who knows how you might act if she came with her beauty and her meshes again?' asked Annabelle, who was smiling now. 'Do not be pitiless to me; and as for her--that woman--she is married, so, Annabelle----' 'Hush--we are interrupted!' 'They suddenly found themselves environed by groups of idlers, and among others came Mrs. Garth, with Mary and Cecil, all of whom Leslie Fotheringhame would have wished very far away--at least on the cone of Arthur's Seat--at that precise moment.