"Ella!" I cried, kissing her passionately on her cold white lips. "How can I save you? How can I gain you for my own? This awful suspense is killing me." "Godfrey," she answered, in a low, distinct voice, "we can never be man and wife--impossible, why therefore let us discuss it further? We love each other with a fond true love, it is true, fonder than man and woman ever loved before, yet both of us are longing for the unattainable," she sighed. "My future, alas! is not in my own hands." "Ah! yes!" I cried in despair. "I see it all! Your fear prevents you from allowing me to unmask this man--you fear that your father should learn your secret!" "I fear that you, too, should learn it--that instead of loving me," she said, with a wild look in her splendid eyes, "you would hate me!" CHAPTER THIRTY EIGHT. TELLS THE TRUTH. In the rich glow of the autumn evening we sat together for some time, our hearts too full of grief for words. The future of both of us was filled with blank despair. My presence there brought back to her all the sweet recollections of those long-past days when she was free, and when to save her father from ruin she had so nobly sacrificed her love. Presently the whirr of the motor-car announced Mr Murray's return, and rising we went into the house to greet him. He welcomed me, but none too warmly I noticed. Probably he did not approve of my calling upon Ella now that she was engaged to marry the man who had so firmly established himself in his confidence. Nevertheless, he asked me to remain to dinner, which I did gladly. He was a slow-speaking gentlemanly man, dark-eyed and dark-bearded, whom I had always liked. From him I learned that Ella's marriage was to take place in the village church of Wichenford in the first week in October, and that the honeymoon was to be spent in St Petersburg. His words cut me like a knife. "Gordon-Wright is down at his country place just now," he remarked an hour later, as we all three sat at table in the great old panelled dining-room with the wax candles burning in the antique Sheffield candelabra. "We go to town next week, and he meets us there. He's a good fellow. Do you know him?" "I met him quite casually once," I replied, glancing across at my well-beloved who had now exchanged her white dress for a black lace dinner gown, in the corsage of which was a single red rose--her favourite flower. Ah! as I looked at her my heart was aflame. I loved her better than my life. Alas! She could never now be mine--never. I left early and drove back to Worcester through the pelting rain--with her rose that she had slipped into my hand at parting, a silent pledge that spoke volumes to me. "Good-bye, dear heart!" she whispered. "We shall perhaps meet again in London." "Yes," I said earnestly. "We must meet once again before your marriage. Promise me you will--promise?"