“But you do not now?—­you don’t want to die and leave me desolate?”

“No, dear! indeed, no! though I don’t think you’d care really.”  He clasped her in a closer embrace and kissed her reproachfully.  “Well, yes, just at first, perhaps.  Yet so long as you want me, I want to stay and be your willing, working wife.  I’ve got a new reason and aim now:  I have you, dear old Ross.”

“Oh, Percy, I do care.  God knows even the thought of it gives me a bitter agony, I know you cannot trust me yet, because I married you so carelessly, and because you think I can’t be true to one woman with my battered old heart.  But that’s because you judge me by what my long, unloved life has made me.  No good woman ever made me love her before.  I never knew how beautiful a pure life was, my darling, until I knew it through watching yours.  When I think of all you have saved me from, which would have caused my undying gratitude had I learned to hate you—­as if I ever could!” and he paused to kiss her—­“when I think of all the new and better hopes you have awakened in my heart, I feel—­God knows I do—­as if He had sent my angel, and let her drag me out of a hell into which I was plunged, and year after year sinking deeper.  Stay with me, dear:  I will be true.  I never cared for any woman in the way—­in the deep, absorbing way—­I do for you.  I wish you would believe me.”

“I do, Ross—­you are so good to me, so good!  Oh, Ross, Ross!” and she held up her face to his, “you are so good to me!” She clung to him one moment, then suddenly, as soon as she could trust her voice, said gayly, “But it’s breakfast-time, and your wife is so unromantically hungry;” and with a sigh that nothing more ever came of their talks he took her down.

When they reached New York the next afternoon, they drove at once to the rooms they had engaged.  Percy’s cousin, Harry Barton, was there to welcome them, having come round from his hotel for the purpose.

“Why, Norval,” said he—­they were old acquaintances—­“you’ve won our bone of contention, after all.  I wonder what we shall do, now that Percy’s safely landed out of our reach?  You’re a brave man to dare our rage.”

“Don’t, Harry!” said Percy, putting her hand on his arm.

“I won’t, dear, if you say not;” and he covered her hand with his own.  “I always did do your lightest bidding, little girl, didn’t I?”

“Yes, you’re a dear old cousin.  Ross knows how much I appreciate your kindness to me always.  Why, I gave up what he calls my ‘bridal tour,’ partly because I wanted to come back and say ‘good-bye’ to you.”

His face flushed crimson at her words, and, all his careless, fashionable manner gone, he said, “Did you, Percy?  You always were good.”

“That, and because—­because I shall be so sorry if you join this African expedition.”

“Don’t ask me not to, Percy—­don’t ask me to stay now you have broken my hope for ever.  I shall go to the dogs, dear, if I stay here now.”