“Your speaking of him just now makes me want to tell you something, Mr. Verrian.  You would hear of it very soon, anyway, and I feel that it is always best to be very frank with you; but you’ll regard it as a secret till it comes out.”

The currents that had been playing so warmly in and out of Verrian’s heart turned suddenly cold.  He said, with joyless mocking, “You know, I’m used to keeping your secrets.  I—­shall feel honored, I’m sure, if you trust me with another.”

“Yes,” she returned, pathetically, “you have always been faithful—­even in your wounds.”  It was their joint tribute to the painful past, and they had paid no other.  She was looking away from him, but he knew she was aware of his hanging his head.  “That’s all over now,” she uttered, passionately.  “What I wanted to say—­to tell you—­is that I am engaged to Mr. Bushwick.”

He could have answered that she had no need to tell him.  The cold currents in and out of his heart stiffened frozenly and ceased to flow; his heart itself stood still for an eternal instant.  It was in this instant that he said, “He is a fine fellow.”  Afterwards, amid the wild bounding of his recovered pulse, he could add, “I congratulate him; I congratulate you both.”

“Thank you,” she said.  “No one knows as I do how good he is—­has been, all through.”  Probably she had not meant to convey any reproach to Verrian by Bushwick’s praise, but he felt reproach in it.  “It only happened last week.  You do wish me happy, don’t you?  No one knows what a winter I have had till now.  Everything seeming to fail—­”

She choked, and did not say more.  He said, aimlessly, “I am sorry—­”

“Let me sit down a moment,” she begged.  And she dropped upon the bench at which she faltered, and rested there, as if from the exhaustion of running.  When she could get her breath she began again:  “There is something else I want to tell you.”

She stopped.  And he asked, to prompt her, “Yes?”

“Thank you,” she answered, piteously.  And she added, with superficial inconsequence, “I shall always think you were very cruel.”

He did not pretend not to know what she meant, and he said, “I shall always think so, too.  I tried to revenge myself for the hurt your harmless hoax did my vanity.  Of course, I made believe at the time that I was doing an act of justice, but I never was able to brave it out afterwards.”

“But you were—­you were doing an act of justice.  I deserved what you said, but I didn’t deserve what has followed.  I meant no harm—­it was a silly prank, and I have suffered for it as if it were a crime, and the consequences are not ended yet.  I should think that, if there is a moral government of the universe, the Judge of all the earth would know when to hold his hand.  And now the worst of it is to come yet.”  She caught Verrian’s arm, as if for help.

“Don’t—­don’t!” he besought her.  “What will people think?”