He endeavored to compromise with duty by throwing the most unfeeling ferocity into his confession; but even the best drilled soldier cannot simultaneously advance and stand where he was. Ellen's eyes were riveted on him now. "I'm sorry. Have I said anything I shouldn't?" She looked distressed, and he realized he had overdone the ferocity. "No, no, I assure you. I only meant I--I--well, one can't have everything." He wished that delirious waltz would stop. It made it so hard to collect one's thoughts, and especially to recover the blank countenance he had managed to assume before he took this chair and heard that music and looked into those eyes. She smiled with playful kindness. "Are you so frightfully hard up?" "It isn't money! Oh, can't you--" He didn't finish his sentence; nor did he need to. A sudden light dawned in Ellen's eyes; her lips instinctively parted; and then she turned her face away. And thus they sat for what seemed an hour, while the sympathetic widow poured out voluptuous harmonies without cessation. In reality it was only two minutes later that Mr. Walkingshaw and Andrew entered: the senior partner looking, for a habitual diner-out, curiously flushed after his mild indulgence in port; the junior partner's full cheeks bulging with the backwash of a lover's smile. Frank sprang up, and his brother, smiling even more affectionately, took his chair. At the same moment the widow stopped playing, and the scales seemed suddenly to fall from the young soldier's eyes. He saw himself as the most despicable villain in Europe, and Ellen as lost for ever, whether as sister or friend. So distraught was he that he had nearly tried to open a mid-Victorian cabinet before he discovered it was not the door. Downstairs he hurried wildly, threw on an ulster and cap, and the front door banged behind him. The unhappy young man looked up at the circle of solemn mansions which towered above him, black against the dark gray heavens, and it seemed to him that each one as he passed it silently rebuked him; while the trees across the street, even though they were decidedly less solid, gave vent to their displeasure audibly. He had been brought up in the severest Scotch traditions, and though life in the army had vastly changed his outlook, it had in certain particulars but substituted "form" for "duty." To-night both standards rose spectrally and shook their awful fingers at him. He had let his heart get the better of his head! No member of his family (save luckless Jean) whom he ever knew or heard of had done such a thing before. Or if they had, the indiscretion had been judiciously hushed up, and the family escutcheon kept stainless. As for the divinity he had scandalized, she would never forgive him; she would always think of him as a traitor to his respectable brother! At this point a little star peeped out of the hurrying clouds and vanished again instantly. It was as though some power above had winked.