“I take you into my confidence, dear; and you will not abuse me that I speak slightingly, out of my soreness, of a rival. Yet she is little that. She is a beautiful and refined lady, of whom I desired a favour that ’twere presumption for such as I to ask. So I withdraw my plan to wed delicately and live highly, and bow my admiration and retire. And then my heart gives a free leap, and I fly for love to the nest of my pretty brown bird.” The girl sat up, and put the hair from her wet eyes. “The bird would die on the morrow,” she said. “Oh! you must go back and try once more.” “What! you would bid me to another’s arms?” “I would bid you do the part of the brave and honourable gentleman my silly fancy went out to.” “And, if I succeeded?” “I should know what was mine. I could be happy and blithe and contented looking forward.” “And would you die a maid for my sake?” She clasped her hands and put them up so against his breast. The tears were running down her cheeks. “Yes,” she murmured, half-choking, “I will promise that--my love--my love that is so far above and beyond me.” He jumped to his feet. “Get you gone!” he cried, almost roughly. “Go! while my heart is running over with pity. I will sit out the night by the fire here, and fight down my devil alone! Not another word, or kiss, or look! and--and, Betty, turn the key as you go and lock me in.” CHAPTER XXVIII. Reason is fatal to romance, and Miss Royston was coming to it. She had, indeed, a very practical side to her character, which side was all of the world and eminently fancy-free. “Kiss-in-the-ring” in a fairy circle is a delightful pastime for the heyday of youth, but the time must come when the gravity of the problem as to to whom one shall throw the final handkerchief, must intrude itself through the merriest helter-skelter of the game. Then, as a matter of necessity, must follow the inevitable formulæ of the pretty cold-shoulder to ineligible _partis_; of little sisterly regrets on behalf of swains who take their dismissal rebelliously; of wee sops to passionate Cerberuses in the shape of Christmas cards depicting hands clasped above the motto “For auld lang syne”; of the citing of Job-comforter maxims felt by the recipient to be totally inapt to the tragedy of the situation. And so the jade plumes herself on her acquirement of the reasonable view, and makes an easy virtue of spoiling faith--which is but a synonym for romance--for the sake of five hundred a year. No doubt this is as it should be; for that very faith, or romance, would be a sorry sole equipment for the nether side of youth. But it is also a matter for regret that reason, when come to, should so commonly refuse credit to any evidence but that of its senses, and should contemn in others that same spirit of ideality which coloured all the early processes of its own evolution.