ession. Look into your heart--into your heart
of hearts. I know you at any rate have a heart; look into it closely.
Mr Gresham, you know you do not love me; not as a man should love the
woman whom he swears to love."

Frank was taken aback. So appealed to he found that he could not any
longer say that he did love her. He could only look into her face
with all his eyes, and sit there listening to her.

"How is it possible that you should love me? I am Heaven knows how
many years your senior. I am neither young nor beautiful, nor have I
been brought up as she should be whom you in time will really love
and make your wife. I have nothing that should make you love me;
but--but I am rich."

"It is not that," said Frank, stoutly, feeling himself imperatively
called upon to utter something in his own defence.

"Ah, Mr Gresham, I fear it is that. For what other reason can you
have laid your plans to talk in this way to such a woman as I am?"

"I have laid no plans," said Frank, now getting his hand to himself.
"At any rate, you wrong me there, Miss Dunstable."

"I like you so well--nay, love you, if a woman may talk of love in
the way of friendship--that if money, money alone would make you
happy, you should have it heaped on you. If you want it, Mr Gresham,
you shall have it."

"I have never thought of your money," said Frank, surlily.

"But it grieves me," continued she, "it does grieve me, to think that
you, you, you--so young, so gay, so bright--that you should have
looked for it in this way. From others I have taken it just as the
wind that whistles;" and now two big slow tears escaped from her
eyes, and would have rolled down her rosy cheeks were it not that she
brushed them off with the back of her hand.

"You have utterly mistaken me, Miss Dunstable," said Frank.

"If I have, I will humbly beg your pardon," said she.
"But--but--but--"

"You have; indeed you have."

"How can I have mistaken you? Were you not about to say that you
loved me; to talk absolute nonsense; to make me an offer? If you were
not, if I have mistaken you indeed, I will beg your pardon."

Frank had nothing further to say in his own defence. He had not
wanted Miss Dunstable's money--that was true; but he could not deny
that he had been about to talk that absolute nonsense of which she
spoke with so much scorn.

"You would almost make me think that there are none honest in this
fashionable world of yours. I well know why Lady de Courc