"You've begged him not to come?" "I've told him not to come," said Cecily haughtily. "If it's his, let him take it. If it's mine, I can choose who shall come there. Don't you see, don't you see? How can I ever cheat myself into thinking it's mine by right, if I see Harry there?" She paused a moment. "And if you'd thrown yourself at a man's head, and he'd refused you, would you want to have him about?" "N--no," said Mina, but rather hesitatingly; uncomfortable situations are to some natures better than no situations at all. "No, of course not," she added more confidently, after she had spent a moment in bracing up her sense of what was seemly. "So I've ended it, I've ended everything. I posted my letter just before you came in, and he'll get it to-morrow. And now, Mina, I'm going back to Blent." She threw herself into an arm-chair, leaning back in a sudden weariness after the excited emotion with which she had declared her resolve. Mina sat on the other side of the table looking at her, and after a moment's looking suddenly began to sob. "It's too miserable," she declared in wrathful woe. "Why couldn't he have said nothing about it and just married you? Oh, I hate it all, because I love you both. I know people think I'm in love with him, but I'm not. It's both of you, it's the whole thing; and now it never, never can go straight. If he got Blent back now by a miracle, it would be just as bad." "Worse," said Cecily, "if you mean that then he might----" "Yes, worse," moaned Mina. "It's hopeless every way. And I believe he's fond of you." A scornful smile was Cecily's only but sufficient answer. "And you love him!" Mina's sorrow made her forget all fear. She said in this moment what she had never before dared to say. "Oh, of course you do, or you'd never have told him he mustn't come to Blent. But he won't understand that--and it would make no difference if he did, I suppose! Oh, you Tristrams!" Again her old despairing cry of revolt and bewilderment was wrung from her by the ways of the family with whose fate she had become so concerned. Southend had felt much the same thing over the matter of Harry and the viscounty. "So it all ends, it all ends--and we've got to go back to Blent!" "Yes, I love him," said Cecily. "That evening in the Long Gallery--the evening when he gave me Blent--do you know what I thought?" She spoke low and quickly, lying back quite still in the attitude that Addie Tristram had once made her own. "I watched him, and I saw that he had something to say, and yet wouldn't say it. I saw he was struggling. And I watched, how I watched! He was engaged to Janie Iver--he had told me that. But he didn't love her--yes, he told me that too. But there was something else. I saw it. I had come to love him then already--oh, I think as soon as I saw him at Blent. And I waited for it. Did you ever do that, Mina--do you remember?"