“Constance,” he pleaded, “look at me, dear.  Give me this one chance.  I shall never trouble you again.”

“You have no right——­” she began tremulously.

“No right to tell you I love you.  Do you think I don’t know that?” he burst out.  “It is just that very knowledge which has burnt itself into me, and seared my very soul.”

“What knowledge?” she asked, forgetful, in the suddenness of his attack, the tactics she had adopted with regard to Lord Standon.

“The knowledge of your engagement,” he answered hoarsely.  “Ah, Constance, be merciful.  Surely not even Standon himself would grudge me these last few moments.”

“What has Lord Standon to do with me?” she asked, looking him full in the face with steadfast eyes.

He stared at her in amazement.

“Is he not your accepted lover?”

His voice betrayed his agony of spirit; and, hearing this, she relented.  Holding up her left hand, the third finger of which was bare of rings, she said quietly, almost, indeed, demurely: 

“This does not look like it, does it?”

The light of hope, new-born, flashed into his face.  He sprang forward eagerly.

“Constance!” he cried.  “My darling!  You will try to care for me then——?” He would have taken her in his arms; but she held him off at arm’s length.

“No! no, Adrien,” she interrupted sadly.  “Because I am not engaged to Lord Standon, is that any reason why I should love one who treats me so lightly?”

“I treat you lightly, you—­the one woman I have ever truly loved?  Constance, whatever sins I may have committed, you are my first love, and you will be my last.  I am not worthy to touch your hand, as pure as it is white, but will you not forgive me the folly of my past life, and let me live in hope that I may do better?  I swear from this day forth to cast off the old life, with all its emptiness and folly, and lay the future at your feet.”

As his passionate words ceased, she turned to him.

“Adrien, I do not know what to think,” she said in low, troubled tones.  “I wrote to you last month—­that day we came up to London, believing that perhaps you had learned to care a little for me; but when you deliberately spent the day with another woman, sooner than with me, what am I to think?”

“What do you mean?” he asked hoarsely.

“I saw you,” she returned simply, “when we were at the station, auntie and I, on the twenty-second——­”

“The twenty-second!” he echoed, through blanched lips.

“Yes, you were at Waterloo Station with some one, I did not see her face.  But what does it matter now?  If you had cared——­” She stopped abruptly.

“I do care,” he reiterated passionately.  “Heaven above knows that; but I do not hope to make you believe me.  Constance, I can give neither you nor any living being the explanation of that awful day.  But I swear to you that the meeting was unsought by me.  I could not help myself.  I do not know how all this has come about.  I understood from Standon that—­that he was engaged to——­”