Miss Nan flies into the room, as she expresses it, "like greased lightning." "Well, what's the matter?" she cries. "Has the bank broke, or has Worth failed, or---- Why, Keith," (with sudden gravity), "are you ill?" Her voice seems to recall his senses. He sits down and looks sadly at the radiant little figure. "Nan," he says brokenly, "I--I have come to say that I have behaved to you like a cad, a brute. I have no excuse to offer. I can only tell you the plain truth, and that is----" "Stop!" she cries suddenly; and all her airs and affectations seem to fall off her, leaving only a quiet, pale-faced little maiden, whose big, bright eyes are clouded and sad. "I know what you mean. You don't love me. It is not what comes to me, Keith, only I thought I might help to console you, being so fond of you as I was, for--she--can be nothing to you after all." "You--you know----" stammers Keith. "Know, of course I know," she answers, with pretty contempt. "Do you think I was reared in Boston and can't see a little bit through a stone wall, specially when that stone wall has some mighty big chinks to let the daylight in? Know--why, who doesn't know that's ever seen you and 'my Lady Lauraine' together?" The colour mounts to Keith's brow. "And I have done her all this harm," he thinks. "Don't be afraid to speak out to me," continues Nan. "I'm too fond of you to be cross, and I know you've tried your best to be true to me. We'd best forget that we ever thought of being more than friends. Don't you trouble to explain. If you hadn't said this, I should have done so before it came to the real business. I don't want to marry a man whose heart is set on another woman, and you loved her before you knew me--didn't you?" "Yes," he says quickly. "Since we were boy and girl together." "And why did she jilt you?" asked Dresden China tranquilly. Her heart is so full, and pained, and angry, that she is afraid of betraying herself. "She was forced into marrying another man during my absence," says Keith coldly. "I was forbidden to write, and when I trusted--well, it was her mother--to tell her about myself--my changed fortunes--she never did. When I came back from New York she was married." "If she'd have been worth her salt she'd have kept true to you," says Nan. "I don't believe in girls caving in, and marrying to please other people. I wouldn't, not for fifty mothers, leave alone one." "No, you are a staunch little thing," says Keith, looking up at the bright _mignonne_ face; "and you are worth a man's whole heart and life, Nan, and I feel I am neither worth the offering nor the acceptance. I have been a fool; but at last I seem to see my folly, and I am going to make one vigorous effort to conquer it. I am going to leave England--perhaps for ever." "I think it is the very best thing you can do," she says quietly. "What is the use of wasting your life, and eating your heart out for a woman who can be nothing to you?"