?"

"It matters nothing," she said.

"But it does matter--to me."

Then a sense of what was fitting told her that it was incumbent on
her to tell him the truth. Sooner or later he would assuredly know,
and it was well that he should know the entire truth from her lips.
She could not put up with the feeling that he should go away deceived
in any degree by herself.

"It was this morning," she said.

"This very morning?"

"It was on this morning that I gave my word to Mr Whittlestaff, and
promised to become his wife."

"And had I been here yesterday I should not have been too late?"

Here she looked up imploringly into his face. She could not answer
that question, nor ought he to press for an answer. And the words
were no sooner out of his mouth than he felt that it was so. It was
not to her that he must address any such remonstrance as that. "This
morning!" he repeated--"only this morning!"

But he did not know, nor could she tell him, that she had pleaded her
love for him when Mr Whittlestaff had asked her. She could not tell
him of that second meeting, at which she had asked Mr Whittlestaff
that even yet he should let her go. It had seemed to her, as she had
thought of it, that Mr Whittlestaff had behaved well to her, had
intended to do a good thing to her, and had ignored the other man,
who had vanished, as it were, from the scene of their joint lives,
because he had become one who ought not to be allowed to interest her
any further. She had endeavoured to think of it with stern justice,
accusing herself of absurd romance, and giving Mr Whittlestaff
credit for all goodness. This had been before John Gordon had
appeared among them; and now she struggled hard not to be less just
to Mr Whittlestaff than before, because of this accident. She knew
him well enough to be aware that he could not easily be brought to
abandon the thing on which he had set his mind. It all passed through
her mind as she prepared her answer for John Gordon. "It can make no
difference," she said. "A promise is a promise, though it be but an
hour old."

"That is to be my answer?"

"Yes, that is to be your answer. Ask yourself, and you will know that
there is no other answer that I can honestly make you."

"How is your own heart in the affair?"

There she was weak, and knew as she spoke that she was weak. "It
matters not at all," she said.

"It matters not at all?" he repeated after her. "I can understand
that my happiness should