h.

'Now you are weak, Walter, trying to bring your delinquencies home to
me,' she said, with the first touch of sharpness he had ever seen in
her. 'It has been your own fault entirely all along, and I have never
had a solitary bit of sympathy for you, and I don't know, either, what
you meant by going on in any such manner.'

'I didn't understand it myself then; I seemed goaded on always to be a
perfect brute when you came. But I believe I understand it now, and
perhaps it would be better if I did not.'

He spoke with considerable agitation, which Gladys affected not to
notice, while her white fingers touched the drooping blossoms tenderly,
as if sympathising with them that their little day was over.

'Suppose you enlighten me, then?' she said, gaily still; then suddenly
seeing his face, her own became very white.

'I don't dare,' he said hoarsely, 'it is too much presumption; but it
will perhaps make you understand and feel for me more than you seem to
do. Don't you see, Gladys, that it is my misery to care for you as
happier men care for the woman they ask to marry them?'

There was a moment's strained silence, then Gladys spoke in a low,
sobbing voice,--

'It is, as I said, Walter, too late, too late! I have promised to marry
another man.'

[Illustration]

CHAPTER XXXI.

WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN.

All the eagerness died out of Walter's face, and he turned away
immediately as if to leave the room. But Gladys prevented him; her face
still red with the hot flush his passionate words had called up, she
stood before him, and laid her hand upon his arm.

'You will not go away now, Walter, just when I hope we are beginning to
understand each other. Do sit down for a little. There is a great deal
left to us,--we can still be friends,--yes, a great deal.'

'It will be better for me to go away,' he said, not bitterly nor
resentfully, but with a quiet manliness which made the heart of Gladys
glow with pride in him, though it was sore with another feeling she did
not quite understand.

'By and by, but not yet,' she said coaxingly. 'Besides, you cannot get a
train just now, even if you were at the station this moment. You shall
be driven into Mauchline in time for the nine-fifteen, and that is an
hour hence. I cannot let you go now, Walter, for I do not know when I
shall see you again.'

She spoke with all the frank, child-like simplicity of the old time, and
he turned back meekly and took his seat again,