He stood before her, silently looking at her.  There was no reproach in his eyes.

“Oh, Bertie, Bertie, forgive me!” she said, laying her hand on his arm.  “Forgive me; I don’t know what I am saying.”

There was some piteousness in her voice and eyes.  She was appealing to him for pity, but he did not know it.  Every man thinks that the world was made for himself alone, and he goes tramping about it, quite careless as to where he plants his heavy feet.  When occasionally he gets a thorn in one of his feet, he feels quite aggrieved.  He never stops to think of all the things his foot crushes quite casually.

Herbert Courtland had no capacity for knowing how the woman before him was suffering.  He should have known, from the words he had just heard her speak.  He should have known that they had been wrung from her.  He did not know, however; he was not thinking of her.

“Bertie,” she said again, “Bertie, you are not angry?  I did not know what I was saying.”

“You are a woman,” he said gently, and it was just by reason of this gentleness that there seemed to be a reproach in his voice.  He reproached her for being a woman.

“I am a woman—­just as other women, just as other women.”  Her voice sounded like a moan.  “I thought myself different, stronger—­perhaps worse than other women.  I was wrong.  Oh, Bertie! cannot you see that she loves you as I loved you long ago—­oh, so long ago?  And someone has said that there is no past tense in love!  No, no! she does not love you as I loved you—­guiltily; no, her love is the love that purifies, that exalts.  She loves you, and she waits for you to tell her that you love her.  You love her, Bertie?”

There was a long pause before he said: 

“Do I?”

“Do you not?”

“God knows.”

And it was at this point that Phyllis came up.  Was there no expression of suspicion on her face as she looked at them standing together?

If there was, they failed to notice it.

“I came out to get a rose,” she said.  “How quickly you dressed, Ella!  Ah, you have got your rose—­a beauty!  Your gardener is generous; he actually allows you to pluck your own roses.”

“Mr. Courtland will choose one for you,” said Ella.  “You may trust Mr. Courtland.”

“To choose me a rose?  Well, on that recommendation, Mr. Courtland, I think I may safely place myself in your hands.  I will accept a rose of your choosing.”

And she did.

CHAPTER XXXII.

LET THEM BOTH GO TOGETHER TO PERDITION.

There could be no doubt whatever that, after all, he had not proposed to her.

That was what Herbert Courtland’s fellow-guests said when they learned that he had left for London by an early train on Monday morning.

And the way she had thrown herself at his head, too!

Of course she pretended not to feel his departure any more than the rest of the party; and equally as a matter of course, Mrs. Linton protested that Mr. Courtland had disappointed her.