It would have been better for him had he gone away at once.  Now he was sitting in a chair, sobbing violently, and pressing away the tears from his cheeks with his hands.  How could he make her understand that he had intended no insult when he embraced her?  Was it not incumbent on him to tell her that the wrong he then did was done to Florence Burton, and not to her?  But his agony was too much for him at present, and he could find no words in which to speak to her.

“I said to myself that you would come when the funeral was over, and I wept for poor Hermy as I thought that my lot was so much happier than hers.  But people have what they deserve, and Hermy, who has done no such wrong as I have done, is not crushed as I am crushed.  It was just, Harry, that the punishment should come from you, but it has come very heavily.”

“Julia, it was not meant to be so.”

“Well; we will let that pass.  I cannot unsay, Harry, all that I have said—­all that I did not say, but which you must have thought and known when you were here last.  I cannot bid you believe that I do not—­love you.”

“Not more tenderly or truly than I love you.”

“Nay, Harry, your love to me can be neither true nor tender—­nor will I permit it to be offered to me.  You do not think that I would rob that girl of what is hers.  Mine for you may be both tender and true; but, alas, truth has come to me when it can avail me no longer.”

“Julia, if you will say that you love me, it shall avail you.”

“In saying that, you are continuing to ill-treat me.  Listen to me now.  I hardly know when it began, for, at first, I did not expect that you would forgive me and let me be dear to you as I used to be; but as you sat here, looking up into my face in the old way, it came on me gradually—­the feeling that it might be so; and I told myself that if you would take me I might be of service to you, and I thought that I might forgive myself at last for possessing this money if I could throw it into your lap, so that you might thrive with it in the world; and I said to myself that it might be well to wait awhile, till I should see whether you really loved me; but then came that burst of passion, and though I knew that you were wrong, I was proud to feel that I was still so dear to you.  It is all over.  We understand each other at last, and you may go.  There is nothing to be forgiven between us.”

He had now resolved that Florence must go by the board.  If Julia would still take him she should be his wife, and he would face Florence and all the Burtons, and his own family, and all the world in the matter of his treachery.  What would he care what the world might say?  His treachery to Florence was a thing completed.  Now, at this moment, he felt himself to be so devoted to Julia as to make him regard his engagement to Florence as one which must, at all hazards, be renounced.  He thought of his mother’s sorrow, of his father’s scorn—­of the