‘You may waste your life in thinking of that,’ she answered. ‘To make it afresh is the wisest thing for you to do, and you can do it. There is the difference between you and my aunt. It is nearly over for her, and she has had nothing; but you are young--you can remake it in time, if you will.’ ‘I will not. I will wait.’ He gazed at her, seeing into her heart and finding only truth there. ‘You will learn to forget me,’ says the flirt and jilt, raising chaste eyes to heaven, and laying a sisterly hand on the shoulder of the man she is torturing, while she listens, with satisfaction, to his hot and miserable denial. The only comfort in such cases is that he generally does so. But with Cecilia there was no false sentiment, nor angling for words to minister to her vanity. He knew that well. Thoroughly did he understand the worth of what he was losing. He thought of the plans he had made only last night, of the flowers to be planted, of the rooms to be transformed, of the horse to be bought, of the jewels he had chosen for her from the iron box. One was lying now in a drawer of his writing-table, ready to be brought to her, and last night he had dreamed that he was fastening it round her neck. That visionary act would have to suffice him. He came across the room and sat down by her, putting his arm about her. They were silent for a few moments, looking together into the gulf of separation before them. Life had played both of them an evil trick, but there was one thing she had been unable to do, and that was to shake their faith in each other. Cecilia had told her lover that he should make his own afresh, and had spoken in all honesty, knowing that, could she prevent his acting on her words by the holding up of her finger, she would not raise it an inch; but for all that, she did not believe he would obey her. Something in herself, which also had its counterpart in him, could foretell that. To struggle against her decision was, as Speid knew, hopeless, for it was based upon what it would lower him in her eyes to oppose. To a certain extent he saw its force, but he would not have been the man he was, nor, indeed, a man of any kind, had he not felt hostile to Lady Eliza. He paid small attention to the assurance that, behind her obvious objection to his own history, there lurked a hidden personal complication, for the details of such an all-pervading ill as the ruin she had made for him were, to him, indifferent. He would wait determinedly. Crauford Fordyce ran through his mind, for, though his trust in Cecilia was complete, it had annoyed him to hear that he was in Kaims. Evidently the young man was of a persevering nature, and, however little worldly advantages might impress her, he knew that these things had an almost absolute power over parents and guardians.