mained my own mistress. Count me a miserably
heartless woman. I do my best. You brought this handkerchief to me dipped
in the blood of the poor boy who was slain. I have worn it. It was a
safeguard. Did you mean it to serve as such? Oh, Percy! I felt
continually that blood was on my bosom. I felt it fighting with me. It
has saved me from much. And now I return it to you."

He could barely articulate "Why?"

"Dear friend, by the reading of the bond you should know. I asked you
when I was leaving India, how long I was to keep it by me. You said,
'Till you marry.' Do not be vehement, Percy. This is a thing that could
not have been averted."

"Is it possible," Percy cried, "that you carried the play out so far as
to promise him to marry him?"

"Your forehead is thunder, Percy. I know that look."

"Margaret, I think I could bear to see our army suffer another defeat
rather than you should be contemptible."

"Your chastisement is not given in half measures, Percy."

"Speak on," said he; "there is more to come. You are engaged to marry
him?"

"I engaged that I would take the name of Blancove."

"If he would cease to persecute Rhoda Fleming!"

"The stipulation was exactly in those words."

"You mean to carry it out?"

"To be sincere? I do, Percy!

"You mean to marry Algernon Blancove?"

"I should be contemptible indeed if I did, Percy!

"You do not?"

"I do not."

"And you are sincere? By all the powers of earth and heaven, there's no
madness like dealing with an animated enigma! What is it you do mean?"

"As I said--to be sincere. But I was also bound to be of service to your
friend. It is easy to be sincere and passive."

Percy struck his brows. "Can you mean that Edward Blancove is the man?"

"Oh! no. Edward will never marry any one. I do him the justice to say
that his vice is not that of unfaithfulness. He had but one love, and her
heart is quite dead. There is no marriage for him--she refuses. You may
not understand the why of that, but women will. She would marry him if
she could bring herself to it;--the truth is, he killed her pride. Her
taste for life has gone. She is bent on her sister's marrying your
friend. She has no other thought of marriage, and never will have. I know
the state. It is not much unlike mine."

Waring fixed her eyes. "There is a man?"

"Yes," she answered bluntly.

"It is somebody, then, whose banker's account is, I hope, satisfactory."

"Yes, Percy;" she looked eage