and with it came an almost unbearable sense of regret. Oh, the pity of it! the pity of it!

"I will tell you!" he burst out suddenly. "God knows it will be a relief to speak to any man, and I believe you will understand. Besides, I owe an explanation to somebody who cares for her. Ninety-nine men out of a hundred would have thought nothing of it, but to me it was just everything. If she failed me there, she failed me everywhere. One could reason about a crime, but you can't reason about a subtle thing like that. It is in the grain of a man's mind. If it strikes you, it strikes you; and if it doesn't strike you, it doesn't strike you; and that's final. It is everything or nothing. And the worst of it is, that as things stand, I have wronged her horribly, and I can't put it right. If she were an ordinary woman it would be a matter of honour to ignore it all, and ask her to be one's wife; but she is Miss Maclean. If one has any arrière pensée, one must at least have the decency to let things alone, and not insult her farther."

In the course of Mr Reynolds's experience as a clergyman he had heard many incoherent confessions, but he had rarely listened to one which left him so completely in the dark as this. His face betrayed no perplexity, however, as he said, "Tell me how you met her, and where."

Then by degrees the truth began to dawn upon him. With bitter self-mockery, Dudley told the story of his doubt as to whether he could marry a "shop-girl"; told how his passion grew till it swept away all obstacles; and then he just hinted at what took place that stormy night when he brought her home from the wood.

"And you told her you loved her?" The words were spoken very quietly and as a matter of course.

Dudley's face flushed more deeply.

"I think we had both risen pretty well above the need of words that night," he said, with a nervous laugh. "When an electric spark passes between two spheresYou see,

I was weighed down by the feeling that I had wasted my life; this London course was a sort of atonement; and I

would not ask a woman to be my wife till I had at least left all schoolboy work behind me. But that night I forgot myself."

"And when you met her next

"I left Borrowness the next day." Dudley's lip curled. "Our next meeting was a fine dramatic tableau at Burlington House, a modern version of the sudden transformation of Cinderella."

"But you had written to her?"

Dudley shook his head. "I had told her-before that night—that I should not be a free man till my examination was over in July. She was so quick; she always seemed to understand. But when I went down to Borrowness, half mad with longing for her-her cousin had gone to America, and Miss Maclean, I was told, was starting for Switzerland with a party of friends!"

"Did you write to her then?"

"I did not know her address. And it was no use writing about a thing like that. Then came my aunt's long illness. She was the best friend I had in the world, and she died."

He paused, and resumed with a sudden change of tone, "Miss Maclean told me her name was Margaret."

'Margaret is her second name."

"Of course I know," Dudley broke out again vehemently, "that thousands of men would treat the whole affair as a joke; would be glad to find that the woman they loved had money and position, after all; but I cared for Miss Maclean on a plane above that. It drives me mad to think how she sat looking at me with those honest eyes, listening to my confessions, and playing her pretty little comedy all the time."

Mr Reynolds waited in vain for Dudley to go on before he spoke.

"I cannot imagine," he said at last, "why you did not ask her to explain herself."

Dudley bit his lip. "If Miss Maclean had forged a cheque," he said, "I should have asked her to explain her

self. It seems to me that the one thing in life of which no explanation is possible, is a difference of opinion as to what is due to friendship-or love."

"Did it never occur to you that Miss Maclean's cousin might have bound her over not to tell any one that she was a medical student?"

There was a pause.

"Why should she?" Dudley asked harshly.

Why she did it I presume was best known to herselfthough, considering the kind of person she seems to have been, it does not strike me as particularly surprising; but one thing I am in a position to say unhesitatingly, and that is, that she did do it."

Another long pause.

"Even if she did," Dudley said, "what was a trumpery promise like that between her and me, if she loved me?"

"Perhaps you did not give her much opportunity to speak of herself; but when I saw her in October, she certainly did not love any man. Whether you taught her to love you afterwards, you are of course the best judge. I do not think she was bound to tell you before she knew that you loved her; and, judging from your own account of what took place, you do not seem to have made it very easy for a self-respecting woman to tell you afterwards."

Little by little the truth of this came home to Ralph, as he sat with his eyes fixed on the glowing embers of the fire. Mr Reynolds gave his words time to take full effect, and then went on.

"When I think how you have made that sensitive girl suffer, Dr Dudley, I am tempted to forget that I owe my knowledge of the circumstances entirely to your courtesy." Ralph looked up with a rather wintry smile. "Don't spare me," he said. there was another long silence.

"Hit hard!" And then

"The one thing I cannot explain," said Mr Reynolds, "is her telling you that her name was Margaret."

"Oh, that's simple enough. It was in early days. I was

talking of the name in the abstract, and she said it was hers; I daresay she never thought of the incident again; and then I saw it in her prayer-book - her mother's, no doubt. Mr Reynolds, I have been a blind fool; but I do think still that she ought to have told me."

"Since the old man has your permission to hit hard, you will allow me to say, that I think you do not realise how far injured pride has a share in your righteous indignation; but I have no wish to convince you. I would fain see my 'elder daughter' the wife of a nobler man."

Ralph smiled in spite of himself.

"That certainly is delivered straight out from the shoulder!" he said; "but do you think it is quite just?

exacting on certain points. That was mine.

a savage.

Every man is

But I am not

No woman on earth should be so free and so

honoured as my wife."

Mr Reynolds rose and held out his hand.

"It is midnight," he said, "and I have no more to say. Go home and think about it."

But when Ralph left the house, it was not to go home, but to pace up and down the squares, in such a tumult of excitement and thanksgiving as he had never known before.

CHAPTER LVIII.

"LOVE MAY GO HANG!"

Lady Munro's "At Home" proved, as Lucy had predicted, "no end of an affair." Sir Douglas considered it snobbish to entertain on a scale beyond the resources of his own ménage; but, if the thing was to be done, he would at least have it done without any visible straining on the part of host and hostess. So the rooms at Gloucester Place were

given over to the tender mercies of Liberty and Gunter for a day or two, and during that time most people found it advisable to keep out of Sir Douglas's way.

When Mona alighted from her cab on the expanse of crimson drugget before the door, she would not have recognised her aunt's rooms. The half lights, the subtle Eastern aroma, and the picturesque figure of Nubboo had disappeared, giving place to a blaze of pretty lamps, festoons of æsthetic drapery, profuse vegetation, and groups of magnificent footmen.

"Come along, Mona!" Evelyn cried impatiently. "Lucy has been here for half an hour. I was so afraid you would be too late to see the rooms before the bloom is knocked off them. The supper-table is simply a dream."

"Bless my soul!" said Lucy, in an awestruck whisper, as Mona threw off her cloak. "You do look imposing! Mary Stuart going to the scaffold is not in it. I don't think I ever saw you in black before. If only you would show a little more of that swan-white neck and arms, I honestly believe this would be the achievement by which you would live in history."

"The fact is," Mona said, laughing, "it has been borne in upon me lately that the youthfulness of my appearance now-a-days is dependent on the absence from the stage of sweet seventeen; so I resolved, like Sir Walter Scott, to strike out in a new line. I aim at dignity now. This " she glanced over her shoulder at the stately figure in the pier-glass-" is my Waverley. I flatter myself that you young Byrons can't compete with me here."

"No, indeed! Schoolgirl is the word," Lucy said, ruefully stepping in front of Mona to survey her own pretty gown in the pier-glass; but this was so palpably untrue that they all laughed.

"I am sure you looked dignified enough in the blue velvet. I wonder you did not wear your diamonds, Mona, while you were about it?"

"I wanted to, but I did not dare to do it without asking