“The dear child is so warmly attached to me!” said the mistress of Thorpe Castle to her husband.  “It is really wonderful.”

While Allan and his sister began to feel, with something of baffled rage, that their power over her was growing less.

“Why do you never consent to see my brother?” asked Adelaide one day, when Allan had complained most bitterly to her.

“Because I have such great respect for my guardians,” she answered.  “I cannot bear anything clandestine or underhand beneath their roof.”

A reply that, strange to say, silenced Miss Lyster.  Brother and sister held a council of war, and it was decided that all deference must be paid to her humor.

“Content yourself, brother, with reminding her of her promise to marry you when she comes of age, but do no more.  Do not seek an interview with her; let her imagine herself quite free.”

But the finishing stroke was given one day during lunch, when the conversation turned upon the elopement of a young lady in the neighborhood.  Lady Ridsdale expressed great fears for her future.

“He is not a gentleman,” she said.  “No true gentleman would ever try to persuade any girl to a clandestine engagement.”

She saw Marion open her eyes and look at her in amazement.

“I am quite right, my dear,” she said.  “You may depend upon it, a man who would persuade any girl to engage herself to him unknown to her friends is not only no gentleman, but he is not even an honest man.”

Marion Arleigh’s beautiful face flushed, then grew deadly pale; almost involuntarily she looked at Allan, but he did not raise his eyes to meet hers.

Those words were the death-blow to her love, or what she called her love—­“Not even an honest man.”  This hero of her romance, this artist whom she was to ennoble by her love, was not even an honest man.  She shuddered and grew faint at the thought.

Again she was present when Lady Ridsdale was talking of the Lysters to her husband.  She praised Allan’s artistic qualities, she admired his talents, but she owned frankly that she did not like him, that she did not think him true.

Marion Arleigh was very much struck with this remark.  Then she began to think over all she knew of the Lysters.  She saw all in the clear light of reason, not in the glamor of love, and her judgment condemned them both.  The sister had been false to her trust; she had betrayed the youth and innocence of the pupil entrusted to her, and he—­she summed up the evil he had done her in these few words—­he was not true.

She decided upon what to do.  She would never be false to them; all her life long she would do her best to advance Allan’s interest; but she must release herself from the tie that became unbearable to her.

He, at this difficult juncture of affairs, behaved with great tact.  He took his sister’s advice, and would not intrude upon her.  He sought no more interviews; he wrote no more notes.