‘Suppose you enlighten me, then?’ she said, gaily still; then suddenly seeing his face, her own became very white.

‘I don’t dare,’ he said hoarsely, ’it is too much presumption; but it will perhaps make you understand and feel for me more than you seem to do.  Don’t you see, Gladys, that it is my misery to care for you as happier men care for the woman they ask to marry them?’

There was a moment’s strained silence, then Gladys spoke in a low, sobbing voice,—­

’It is, as I said, Walter, too late, too late!  I have promised to marry another man.’

[Illustration]

CHAPTER XXXI.

WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN.

All the eagerness died out of Walter’s face, and he turned away immediately as if to leave the room.  But Gladys prevented him; her face still red with the hot flush his passionate words had called up, she stood before him, and laid her hand upon his arm.

’You will not go away now, Walter, just when I hope we are beginning to understand each other.  Do sit down for a little.  There is a great deal left to us,—­we can still be friends,—­yes, a great deal.’

‘It will be better for me to go away,’ he said, not bitterly nor resentfully, but with a quiet manliness which made the heart of Gladys glow with pride in him, though it was sore with another feeling she did not quite understand.

‘By and by, but not yet,’ she said coaxingly.  ’Besides, you cannot get a train just now, even if you were at the station this moment.  You shall be driven into Mauchline in time for the nine-fifteen, and that is an hour hence.  I cannot let you go now, Walter, for I do not know when I shall see you again.’

She spoke with all the frank, child-like simplicity of the old time, and he turned back meekly and took his seat again, though it seemed for the moment as if all brightness and energy had gone out of him.  Her hands trembled very much as they resumed their delicate task among the flowers, and her sweet mouth quivered too, though she tried to speak bravely and brightly as before.

’Do tell me, Walter, what you are thinking of doing now that your business has become so prosperous.  Don’t you think you have lived quite long enough in that dingy Colquhoun Street?’

’Perhaps so.  I had thoughts of leaving it, but it is a great thing for a man to be on the premises.  Your uncle would not have approved of my leaving the place so soon.  Colquhoun Street was good enough for him all his days,’ said Walter, striving to speak naturally, and only partially succeeding.

’Ah, yes, poor man; but just think how much he denied himself to give me all this,’ she said, with a glance round the beautiful room.  ’How much happier he and I would have been with something a little lower than this, and a little higher than Colquhoun Street.  It often makes me sad to think of the poverty of his life and the luxury of mine.’