Years went on, and poor, unhappy Blanche Challoner remained faithful to her love.

He played fast and loose with her—­professing attachment for her in secret, and visiting at the house; perhaps he feared an outbreak from her, an exposure that might be anything but pleasant, did he throw off all relations between them.  Blanche summoned up her courage and spoke to him, urging the marriage; she had not yet glanced at the fear that his intention of marrying her, had he ever possessed such, was over.  Bad men are always cowards.  Sir Francis shrank from an explanation, and so far forgot honor as to murmur some indistinct promise that the wedding should be speedy.

Lydia Challoner had married, and been left a widow, well off.  She was Mrs. Waring; and at her house resided Blanche.  For the girls were orphans.  Blanche was beginning to show symptoms of her nearly thirty years; not the years, but the long-continued disappointment, the heart-burnings, were telling upon her.  Her hair was thin, her face was pinched, her form had lost its roundness.  “Marry her, indeed!” scoffed to himself Sir Francis Levison.

There came to Mrs. Waring’s upon a Christmas visit a younger sister, Alice Challoner, a fair girl of twenty years.  She resided generally with an aunt in the country.  Far more beautiful was she than Blanche had ever been, and Francis Levison, who had not seen her since she was a child, fell—­as he would have called it—­in love with her.  Love!  He became her shadow; he whispered sweet words in her ear; he turned her head giddy with its own vanity, and he offered her marriage.  She accepted him, and preparations for the ceremony immediately began.  Sir Francis urged speed, and Alice was nothing loth.

And what of Blanche?  Blanche was stunned.  A despairing stupor took possession of her; and, when she woke from it, desperation set in.  She insisted upon an interview with Sir Francis, and evade it he could not, though he tried hard.  Will it be believed that he denied the past—­that he met with mocking suavity her indignant reminders of what had been between them?  “Love!  Marriage?  Nonsense!  Her fancy had been too much at work.”  Finally, he defied her to prove that he had regarded her with more than ordinary friendship, or had ever hinted at such a thing as a union.

She could not prove it.  She had not so much as a scrap of paper written on by him; she had not a single friend or enemy to come forward and testify that they heard him breathe to her a word of love.  He had been too wary for that.  Moreover there was her own solemn protestations to her sister Lydia that there was not anything between her and Francis Levison; who would believe her if she veered round now, and avowed these protestations were false?  No; she found that she was in a sinking ship; one there was no chance of saving.