“That is only your opinion of yourself.  But with my will, you shall make no more frippery of the kind.  It is quite beneath you.”

“It is not beneath me to earn an honest livelihood.”

“No; but it was cruel to make you have to do it.  I have been so sorry for you all these months, when Miss Melville told me how you were employed.”

“Do not say anything more about your pity for me; it pains me.”

“It is not pity; it is love,” said he, stoutly.

“Love born of pity; that will die when—­I mean if—­but it cannot be; I never can be your wife—­the most unsuitable, the most wrong thing that I could do.  Do not speak any more about it.”

Elsie’s real distress convinced Mr. Brandon of her sincerity, but it set him on a wrong scent.  There must be a rival; no doubt she must love some one else, or she would have given him a hearing.  It was not possible that a girl would prefer poverty, solitude, and a position like that which she held at Mrs. Dunn’s, to marriage with a good-looking, good-tempered fellow like himself, who would deny her nothing, and who intended to be the kindest husband in the world—­if her heart was disengaged.  Now poor Elsie was as heart-whole as a girl could be, but her manner of refusing made him think of a number of little signs which looked as if she were the victim of a hopeless attachment.  Her sadness, her poetry, her little sighs, her diffidence, her pining away, were all due to the shameful conduct of one who in happier days had sought her hand, and had deserted her when fortune changed.  His pity for her increased, but his love did not.  If she had the bad taste to prefer a sad memory to a living lover, she might do so.  He did not care to inquire as to the particulars of her unhappy love, even if he had thought it honourable to do so.  The truth is, that Mr. Brandon did not love Elsie very much, though he thought he did so when he asked her.  If she had said yes—­if she had looked at him with grateful eyes, and told him that she would try to do her best to make him happy, his love would have become real, and would have surprised both himself and her by its strength and its steadiness.  But he had never dreamed of such a thing as a refusal, and he had hastened his proposal, not from any feeling of insecurity, but from a desire to make Elsie very happy, and to do it as soon as possible.

But he had been refused—­positively refused.  Elsie might have said more of the obligation to him—­might have been more grateful for the compliment which he had paid to her—­Walter Brandon thought it would have been graceful to do so; but she said nothing of the kind.  She sat in a rigid, painful silence till they reached the next station, where other passengers joined them, and put an end to a tete-A-tete which was rather awkward for both parties.  She felt that she had given pain and mortification to a man who had meant well by her, and she did not dare