poke again her voice was low, but angry.

"You outstrip the limits of friendship in daring to tell me what the
gossips here say of me."

"I had no intention of telling you. I suppose it slipped out because I
hate to believe it true."

"You need not believe it; I am not going to marry Sir Cecil Bland,"
said May, coldly. "What has it to do with you, may I ask?"

"Thank Heaven!" muttered Paul, under his breath.

"What have you against him?"

"Nothing. Except that I suppose he loves you, and I love you too, and,
although I know better than you can tell me, that my love is perfectly
hopeless, I can bear it if I may let you live in my heart a little
while, as the one woman in all the world to me, the only woman I have
ever loved or ever wished to marry. That must not have been if you
were pledged to marry some one else."

"Oh, stop!" said May, laying an entreating hand upon his arm; "I feel
as if I had been so cruel, I would not rest until I had you for a
friend, but I never dreamed of this."

"Nor I, until to-day," said Paul. "But when I heard that some one else
was likely to marry you I knew."

"Put me back into the old niche. Can't we forget about to-night?"

Paul laughed a little harshly.

"Forget!" he echoed drearily. "How little women know the way a man can
love? With you I shall only rank as one of the many moths that have
singed their wings by flying too closely about you."

"No, no! I shall think of you always as my one man-friend, to whom I
could say anything that was in my head. I shall miss him dreadfully."

"And under no circumstances can you think of me in a different light?"

"I don't know, but I think not," May said simply. "You may think it
odd, or call me heartless, but I have not yet met the man I wish to
marry. There! you see I trust you to the last. Good-bye, my friend."

Paul bent over the hand that was put into his own and kissed it, and
went home feeling that the chill of the night had closed about his
heart.

CHAPTER X.

RIVAL SUITORS.

"Where have you been, May? I have been frightened to death about you."

The process was apparently a painless one, judging from the extreme
comfort of Mrs. Webster's surroundings: her easy-chair drawn close to
the fire but sheltered from it by a screen, the lamp on the table
adjusted to a nicety behind, the illustrated papers ready cut for use,
and the last new novel lying open on her lap. May seated herself
leisurely and st