The soldier's blue eyes look at her with a keen reproach before which her own glance wavers and falls. "Lady Vera, you are no coquette," he exclaims, "and yet I could swear that you have given me encouragement to hope that you would love me. Do you remember the beautiful poems of love I have read to you, with my very heart on my lips? Do you remember the songs I have sung to you, and the dreamy twilights when we sat and talked together? Do you remember how you have worn the flowers I brought you? You have blushed and smiled for me as you did for no other, and you are no coquette. Oh, my darling, surely you will love me?" As he talks to her, the color goes from white to red, and red to white in her beautiful face. Her lips quiver, the tears spring into her eyes. "You are blaming me," she says, incoherently, "but you have no right. I know nothing of love. I thought we were only friends. I am so sorry." "Do you mean to say you do not love me, that you did not know I loved you, and was seeking you for my wife, Lady Vera?" he asks, with forced calmness. "Yes, I mean all these things," she answers, looking at him with such wide, frank, innocent eyes that he can find no room for doubt. He is puzzled for a moment. "I have deceived myself," he sighs, inly. "I thought she was learning to love me." "Lady Vera, I have been too hopeful," he says, manfully. "I have been thinking of love while you dreamed only of friendship. But now that you know my heart, will you not suffer me to woo you for my bride? I love you so dearly I am sure I could make you happy." Ah! the fathomless pain that comes into the dark eyes into which he gazes so tenderly. He cannot understand it. "I shall never marry, Captain Lockhart," she answers, in a low, pained voice. "There is no use to woo me. I can never be yours." "Never!" he echoes, with despair in his voice. "I shall never marry anyone," she repeats, mournfully. He looks at her with all his passionate heart in his eyes. "Never is a terrible word, Lady Vera," he answers sadly. "Only think how I love you. I have never loved anyone before in all my life, and I shall never love anyone again. You are my first and last love. Only think how terrible it is, how cruelly hard, for me to give up the hopes of winning you for my own. You are so beautiful and noble, my dark-eyed love. I have dreamed of kissing your small, white hands, your fair, white brow, your golden hair, even your beautiful, crimson lips. I had thought to win you for my very own, and now you strike dead every hope by that cruel word, _never_. Oh, my darling, you are too young to say you will never wed. What can you know of the needs of your own heart? Let me teach you to love me." "Ah, if he only knew the fatal truth," the tortured young heart moans to itself, in the silence of its great despair. "If he knew that I am already bound by a tie that I hate and loathe." But she speaks no word, only to look up at him with pained, dark eyes, and reiterate: