t! No, little woman, as soon as ever I can get things
squared up, I'm off out of this, and I dare say we'll never see each
other again. I've made a mess of things here, and I'm off somewhere
else."

It seemed almost incredible to her that a man could so throw up the
fight; and then a thought flashed into her mind.

"It is not because Miss Grant has come that you do this?"

He laughed with a well-simulated indifference.

"Miss Grant!" he said, "I have only seen her twice--that day on the
coach and last night."

She seemed to study the question, still holding his hands, and looking
up into his face. The light in the room was stronger, and there were
sounds as if some of the household were stirring.

"So we must say 'Good-bye!'" she said, "just because you are short of
money. Gavan, I would have thought more of you, had you told me you were
tired of me and were going in for the other girl. I think I could have
respected you at any rate; but to sneak out on the story of not being
able to afford it--"

His face darkened, and he began to speak, but she stopped him, and went
on in a passionless sort of voice. "Some one is coming," she said, "and
we must say good-bye; and since you wish it, it is Good-bye.' But
I'm not a child, to change my fancies in a day, so I won't promise to
forget. And I think you have treated me very badly, so neither will
I promise to forgive. I had set my heart on you, Gavan. You seemed to
me--but there, it's no use talking. I suppose I should be meek and mild,
and--"

"But, Ellen--"

"No, don't interrupt me. It is the last talk together we shall have. I
suppose I can go governessing, or nursing, to the end of the chapter. It
seems a dreary outlook, doesn't it? Now go, and remember that I do not
forgive easily. I had built such castles, Gavan, and now--" She slipped
quietly from the room, and was gone.

Gavan Blake drove home, feeling a trifle uneasy. He had expected some
sort of outburst, but the curious way in which she had taken it rather
non-plussed him.

"She won't stick a knife in herself, I suppose," he mused. "Just like
her to do something unusual. Anyway, she has too much pride to talk
about it--and the affair had to come to an end sooner or later."

And feeling that if not "on with the new love," he was, at any rate,
satisfactorily "off with the old," Blake drove his spanking ponies off
to Tarrong, while Ellen Harriott went about her household work with
a face as inscrutable a