“It’s true, every word of it! You are really the prettiest girl in New York, Eva. I said so the first time I saw you, and I say so still. The prettiest and the sweetest.” “It’s coming! I’m so sorry!” she thought with secret dismay, having grown in a year of belleship quite familiar with the signs. “Oh, no,” she answered deprecatingly. “But I say yes,” he insisted, trying to look down ardently into the dark eyes that were persistently turned away from him, while he continued: “You know well enough all I think of you, Eva! The first time we met you wiled my heart away with one look of your big, innocent dark eyes, like a wondering child’s, and I have been in your toils ever since! But I tried to be patient. I waited till you had seen the world and had had your pick and choice of lovers, and refused one after another till I thought: ‘I will speak now, for there may be a chance for me.’ Is there, little Eva? Do you love me? Will you be my wife?” She knew it all before, as he said; all his love and his hopes. How could she help it when his devotion was so plain? And the pain of refusing him, the sorrow of dashing his hopes to earth, shook her heart with such pity that she did not know how to answer him; her tongue seemed to cleave to the roof of her mouth. “You do not speak, my darling!” he added anxiously. “Why do you turn your eyes away? Are you coquetting with me? Does silence give consent?” “Oh, no, no!” she managed to blurt out, in her alarm lest he consider himself accepted. Reginald Hamilton’s face paled to the hue of ashes at those words from Eva’s lips, and, gripping the lines more tightly to restrain the spirited prancing of the grays that hindered hearing, he muttered eagerly: “I don’t think I understood you rightly, Eva! Did you say yes?” She gathered all her reluctant strength for the answer and said gently: “No, no; I cannot marry you, because I do not love you!” He had no more looked to be refused than he had expected the blue heavens to fall and blot him out of existence. His brain went dizzy with the shock, his senses seemed to reel, a fury of indignation shook him so that he was obliged to wreak vengeance instantly on something or other. Eva, shrinking by his side, heard a stifled imprecation from his blanched lips as he caught the horse-whip in a shaking hand and struck the grays sharply over the back. The spirited animals had never brooked the lash. They bolted instantly, tearing the sleigh along like mad, to the horror of every beholder. CHAPTER XXVII. THROWN TOGETHER AGAIN. Ada Winton had indeed kept Eva accurately informed as far as she knew relative to Doctor Ludington’s movements. When his short sensational trial for murder was over and he had served out the three months’ sentence for manslaughter, he came out into the world again with a new purpose.