“Perhaps Miss Lacy is tired,” suggested the deep voice of Bruce Armytage. I had been going to plead for a brief respite, but at that sound the desire for repose fled, and without a look in his direction I returned to the instrument and began to play the dance they had asked for. But I had not been so occupied long before I became aware that some one amongst them continued to hover about the piano, and felt by intuition that it was Bruce Armytage. At that discovery my fingers flew faster and more gaily, and I regarded the notes before me with a fixed smile, whilst, in order to keep up my courage, I kept repeating to myself: “He deserted me: he left me for no fault of mine. My father and mother died, and he never came near me in my sorrow. He is fickle, base, dishonourable--unworthy of regard.” I tried to set the notes of the waltz that I was playing to the words, “Fickle, base, dishonourable!” but they refused to be so matched, and only seemed to repeat instead, “I loved him, I loved him, I loved him!” and then a blurred mist came before my eyes, and I had to play from memory; for Bruce Armytage had taken up his station at the back of the piano and was looking me full in the face. “It is a long time since we met, Miss Lacy,” he remarked presently, but in so low a voice that had my hearing not been sharpened by anger at his daring to address me, I do not think I should have caught the words. “Do you think so?” I answered carelessly, for I felt that I must say something. “How can you ask? Have the last five years passed so pleasantly as to leave no evidence of the flight of time?” “Considering,” I replied, panting with indignation at what appeared to me such thorough indifference to my feelings, “considering, Mr. Armytage, that during the years you speak of, I have lost both my dear parents, I should think you might have spared me the allusion.” “Forgive me. I do not mean to wound you. But if the loss of your parents is the only loss you have to regret during those five years, you are happier than some, Miss Lacy. Death is natural, but there are griefs (the loss of love and hope, for instance) almost too unnatural to be borne.” How dared he, how dared he--he who had treated me in so cruel and unnatural a manner himself, who had but just plighted his faith afresh to my friend--quietly stand there, looking me in the face with his dark, searching eyes, and taunt me with the barrenness of the life which he had made sterile? Much as I had loved him--much as I feared I loved him still--I could have stood up at that moment and denounced him to them all as a traitor and a coward. But I thought of Amy, dear little innocent, confiding Amy, and I was silent. “_I_ have not lost them,” I answered him, quietly. “Therefore I cannot sympathise with your allusion. The death of my dear parents was more than sufficient trouble for me; all else of solace that this world can give me is mine.” “Do you mean to tell me--” he commenced quickly.