ers, it would be wicked."

"May I ask you one question, for if the answer is in the negative, I
shall still continue to hope? Do you care for any other man?"

Again she looked at him with her fearless eyes and answered:

"Yes, I am engaged to another man."

"To Alan Vernon?"

She nodded.

"When did that happen? Some years ago?"

"No, this morning."

"Great Heavens!" he muttered in a hoarse voice turning his head away,
"this morning. Then last night it might not have been too late, and last
night I should have spoken to you, I had arranged it all. Yes, if it had
not been for the story of that accursed fetish and your uncle's illness,
I should have spoken to you, and perhaps succeeded."

"I think not," she said.

He turned upon her and notwithstanding the tears in his eyes they burned
like fire.

"You think--you think," he gasped, "but I know. Of course after this
morning it was impossible. But, Barbara, I say that I will win you yet.
I have never failed in any object that I set before myself, and do
not suppose that I shall fail in this. Although in a way I liked and
respected him, I have always felt that Vernon was my enemy, one destined
to bring grief and loss upon me, even if he did not intend to do so.
Now I understand why, and he shall learn that I am stronger than he. God
help him! I say."

"I think He will," Barbara answered, calmly. "You are speaking wildly,
and I understand the reason and hope that you will forget your words,
but whether you forget or remember, do not suppose that you frighten
me. You men who have made money," she went on with swelling indignation,
"who have made money somehow, and have bought honours with the moneys
somehow, think yourselves great, and in your little day, your little,
little day that will end with three lines in small type in _The Times_,
you are great in this vulgar land. You can buy what you want and people
creep round you and ask you for doles and favours, and railway porters
call you 'my Lord' at every other step. But you forget your limitations
in this world, and that which lives above you. You say you will do this
and that. You should study a book which few of you ever read, where it
tells you that you do not know what you will be on the morrow; that your
life is even as a vapour appearing for a little time and then vanishing
away. You think that you can crush the man to whom I have given my heart
because he is honest and you are dishonest, because you are