"Will you drive Miss Schuyler slowly in the direction she was going, Breckenridge?" he said. "Hetty, I want to talk to you, and can't keep you here." Hetty was too cold to reflect, and, almost before she knew how he had accomplished it, found herself in Grant's sleigh and the man piling the robes about her. When he wheeled the horses she was only conscious that he was very close to her and that Breckenridge and Miss Schuyler were driving slowly a little distance in front of them. Then, glancing up, as though under compulsion, she saw that Grant was looking down upon her. "It is not what I meant to tell you, but doesn't this remind you of old times, Hetty?" he said. "I don't want to remember them--and what have they to do with what concerns us now?" said the girl. There was a new note in the man's voice that was almost exultant in its quietness. "A good deal, I think. Hetty, if you hadn't driven so often beside me here, would you have done what you have to-night?" "No," said the girl tremulously. "No," Grant said. "You have done a rash as well as a very generous thing." "It was rash; but what could I do? We were, as you remind me, good friends once." "Yes," he said. "I can't thank you, Hetty--thanks of any kind wouldn't be adequate--and there is nothing else I can offer to show my gratitude, because all I had was yours already. You have known that a long while, haven't you?" The girl looked away from him. "I was not good enough to understand its value at first, and when I did I tried to make you take it back." "I couldn't," he said gently. "It was perhaps worth very little; but it was all I had, and--since that day by the river--I never asked for anything in return. It was very hard not to now and then, but I saw that you had only kindness to spare for me." "Then why do you talk of it again?" "I think," said Grant very quietly, "it is different now. After to-night nothing can be quite the same again. Hetty, dear, if you had missed me and I had ridden on to the bridge----" "Stop!" said the girl with a shiver. "I dare not think of it. Larry, can't you see that just now you must not talk in that strain to me?" "But there is a difference?" and Grant looked at her steadily. For a moment the girl returned his gaze, her face showing very white in the faint light flung up by the snow; but she sat very straight and still, and the man's passion suddenly fell from him. "Yes," she said softly, "there is. I was only sure of it when I fancied I had missed you a few minutes ago; but that can't affect us, Larry. We can neither of us go back on those we belong to, and I know how mean I was when I tried to tempt you. You were staunch, and if I were less so, you would not respect me." Grant sighed. "You still believe your father right?" "Yes," said Hetty. "I must hope so; and if he is wrong, I still belong to him." "But you can believe that I am right, too?"