ible."

"Yet easy, I dare say. Disease of the heart, when it carries one off,
is seldom painful. Clarissa, this is the very first time you have
spoken of her, either."

"Is it?" She turns away from him, and, catching a branch, takes from
it a leaf or two. "You have not spoken to me," she says.

"Because, as I said, you forbade me. Don't you know your word to me is
law?"

"I don't think I know much," says Miss Peyton, with a sad little
smile; but she lets her hand lie in his, and does not turn away from
him. "Horace is in Ceylon," she says presently.

"Yes, and doing very well. Do you often think of him now?"

"Very often. I am glad he is getting on successfully."

"Have you forgotten nothing, Clarissa?"

"I have forgotten a great deal. How could it be otherwise? I have
forgotten that I ever loved any one. It seems to me now impossible
that I could have felt all that I did two months ago. Yet something
lingers with me,--something I cannot explain." She pauses, and looks
idly down upon her white hands, the fingers of which are twining and
intertwining nervously.

"Do you mean that you have ceased to think of Horace in the light of a
lover?" he asks, with an effort certainly, yet with determination. He
will hear the truth now or never.

"What! wouldst thou have a serpent sting thee twice?" she says,
turning to him with some passion; and then her anger fades, and her
eyes fill with tears.

"If you can apply such a word to him, your love must be indeed dead,"
he says, in a curious tone, and, raising one of her hands, he lays it
upon his breast.

"I wish it had never been born," she says, with a sigh, not looking at
him.

"But is it dead?" persists he, eagerly.

"Quite. I buried it that day you took me--to his--rooms: you
remember?"

"How could I forget? Clarissa, if you are unhappy, so am I. Take pity
upon me."

"You unhappy?" She lifts her eyes to his.

"Yes. All my life I have loved you. Is your heart quite beyond my
reach?"

She makes him no answer.

"Without you I live but half a life," he goes on, entreatingly. "Every
hour is filled with thoughts of you. I have no interests apart from
you. Clarissa, if there is any hope for me, speak; say something."

"Would not his memory be a shadow between us always?" whispers she, in
trembling accents. "Forgiveness is within our power, forgetfulness is
beyond us! Jim, is this thing wise, that you are doing? Have you
thought of it?"

"I have thought of