most sure you did--that you were sitting with
him ON that tomb. Good God!' he cried, suddenly starting up in anger,
'are you telling me untruths? Why should you play with me like this?
I'll have the right of it. Elfride, we shall never be happy! There's
a blight upon us, or me, or you, and it must be cleared off before we
marry.' Knight moved away impetuously as if to leave her.

She jumped up and clutched his arm

'Don't go, Harry--don't!

'Tell me, then,' said Knight sternly. 'And remember this, no more fibs,
or, upon my soul, I shall hate you. Heavens! that I should come to this,
to be made a fool of by a girl's untruths----'

'Don't, don't treat me so cruelly! O Harry, Harry, have pity, and
withdraw those dreadful words! I am truthful by nature--I am--and I
don't know how I came to make you misunderstand! But I was frightened!'
She quivered so in her perturbation that she shook him with her {Note:
sentence incomplete in text.}

'Did you say you were sitting on that tomb?' he asked moodily.

'Yes; and it was true.'

'Then how, in the name of Heaven, can a man sit upon his own tomb?'

'That was another man. Forgive me, Harry, won't you?'

'What, a lover in the tomb and a lover on it?'

'Oh--Oh--yes!'

'Then there were two before me?

'I--suppose so.'

'Now, don't be a silly woman with your supposing--I hate all that,' said
Knight contemptuously almost. 'Well, we learn strange things. I
don't know what I might have done--no man can say into what shape
circumstances may warp him--but I hardly think I should have had the
conscience to accept the favours of a new lover whilst sitting over the
poor remains of the old one; upon my soul, I don't.' Knight, in moody
meditation, continued looking towards the tomb, which stood staring them
in the face like an avenging ghost.

'But you wrong me--Oh, so grievously!' she cried. 'I did not meditate
any such thing: believe me, Harry, I did not. It only happened so--quite
of itself.'

'Well, I suppose you didn't INTEND such a thing,' he said. 'Nobody ever
does,' he sadly continued.

'And him in the grave I never once loved.'

'I suppose the second lover and you, as you sat there, vowed to be
faithful to each other for ever?'

Elfride only replied by quick heavy breaths, showing she was on the
brink of a sob.

'You don't choose to be anything but reserved, then?' he said
imperatively.

'Of course we did,' she responded.

'"Of course!" You seem to treat the