done since she was the
smallest child, and pressed her head against his breast, and waited.
So often he had waited thus upon Elspeth.

"There is nothing to cry about, dear," he said tenderly, when the time
to speak came. "You have, instead, the right to be proud that so good
a man loves you. I am very proud of it, Elspeth."

"If I could be sure of that!" she gasped.

"Don't you believe me, dear?"

"Yes, but--that is not what makes me cry. Tommy, don't you see?"

"Yes," he assured her, "I see. You are crying because you feel so
sorry for him. But I don't feel sorry for him, Elspeth. If I know
anything at all, it is this: that no man needs pity who sincerely
loves; whether that love be returned or not, he walks in a new and
more beautiful world for evermore."

She clutched his hand. "I don't understand how you know those things,"
she whispered.

Please God, was Tommy's reflection, she should never know. He saw most
vividly the pathos of his case, but he did not break down under it; it
helped him, rather, to proceed.

"It will be the test of Gemmell," he said, "how he bears this. No man,
I am very sure, was ever told that his dream could not come true more
kindly and tenderly than you told it to him." He was in the middle of
the next sentence (a fine one) before her distress stopped him.

"Tommy," she cried, "you don't understand. That is not what I told him
at all!"

It was one of the few occasions on which the expression on the face of
T. Sandys perceptibly changed.

"What did you tell him?" he asked, almost sharply.

"I accepted him," she said guiltily, backing away from this alarming
face.

"What!"

"If you only knew how manly and gentle and humble he was," she cried
quickly, as if something dire might happen if Tommy were not assured
of this at once.

"You--said you would marry him, Elspeth?"

"Yes!"

"And leave me?"

"Oh, oh!" She flung her arms around his neck.

"Yes, but that is what you are prepared to do!" said he, and he held
her away from him and stared at her, as if he had never seen Elspeth
before. "Were you not afraid?" he exclaimed, in amazement.

"I am not the least bit afraid," she answered. "Oh Tommy, if you knew
how manly----" And then she remembered that she had said that already.

"You did not even say that you would--consult me?"

"Oh, oh!"

"Why didn't you, Elspeth?"

"I--I forgot!" she moaned. "Tommy, you are angry!" She hugged him, and
he let her do it, but all th