A faintly-breathed “Oh!” fluttered from Ethel’s lips. She withdrew her fingers from his clasp gently but firmly. Everard’s heart sank still lower, but he went bravely on: “Many a time before to-day,” he continued, “have I been tempted to speak to you, to tell you what I am telling you now, but it was a temptation to which I would not yield. I was a poor man with no prospects worth speaking of; and I would not seek to entangle you in an engagement which might have to last for years. But, after long waiting, Fortune’s wheel has turned for me, and now——” He ceased abruptly at the touch of her hand on his sleeve. Her large dark eyes—and at that moment they looked to him larger and darker than they had ever looked before—were gazing into his beseechingly. “Not a word more—not one, please, Mr. Lisle,” she entreated. “Oh, I am so sorry that you have told me this!” “Is my telling it you, then, of no avail?” he demanded, a little hoarsely. “Of none whatever,” she replied with a slow shake of her head. His eyes scanned her face searchingly and read there but too surely that his sentence was irrevocable. His chest rose and fell a few times. Not all at once could he command himself. “So be it,” he said at length. “We must all bow to the inevitable. Mine has been the mistake, and mine must be the penalty. I will not urge you by a word more, because I feel how useless it would be to do so. Nor will I longer intrude upon your time. We shall always, I trust, meet as friends in time to come.” “It would grieve me to think otherwise.” Then, as she held out her hand: “Always as friends, Mr. Lisle, come what may.” With one hand he lifted his hat and with the other he raised her fingers to his lips. “I am so sorry,” again broke involuntarily from Ethel. “The sorrow and the regret are for me,” answered Everard with a dim smile as, after touching her fingers with his lips, he released them with a sort of gentle reluctance. “For you I trust there are in store many, many returns of to-day, each and all of them crowned with happiness.” Half-a-minute later she was alone. “Everard Lisle loves me!” she murmured to herself as he disappeared round a bend of the drive. “How strange it seems! And yet, now that he has told me, I can call to mind a dozen little things, any one of which would have revealed his secret to me had I not been so blind. How cruel he must have thought me! how abrupt! And yet what other answer was it possible for me to give him? None whatever.”