or him.

"If I had never known you?" he repeated, "why, Peggy--dearest--my whole
life would have been different if I had never known you! Do you really
think that I should have been here in Paris, doing what I am now
doing--or rather doing nothing--if we had never met?"

The honest, unmeditated answer made her wince, but she went on, as if
she had not heard it--

"As you know, I did not take Adele's advice, but I have never forgotten,
Laurence, some of the things she said."

A look which crossed his face caused her to redden, and add hastily,
"She's not given to speaking of you--of us; indeed she's not! She never
again alluded to the matter; but the other day when I was persuading
her,--she required a good deal of persuasion, Laurence--to consent to my
plan, I reminded her of all she had said four years ago."

"And what was it that she did say four years ago?" asked Vanderlyn with
a touch of angry curiosity; "as Madame de Lera is a Frenchwoman, and a
pious Catholic, I presume she tried to make you believe that our
friendship was wrong, and could only lead to one thing----" he stopped
abruptly.

"No," said Peggy, quietly, "she did not think then that our friendship
would lead to--to this; she thought in some ways better of me than I
deserve. But she did tell me that I was taking a great responsibility
on myself, and that if anything happened--for instance, if I
died----" Vanderlyn again made a restless, almost a contemptuous
movement--"I should have been the cause of your wasting the best years of
your life; I should have broken and spoilt your career, and all--all for
nothing."

"Nothing?" exclaimed Vanderlyn passionately. "Ah! Peggy, do not say
that. You know, you must know, that our love--I will not call it
friendship," he went on resolutely, "for this one week let no such false
word be uttered between us--you must know, I say, that our love has been
everything to me! Till I met you, my life was empty, miserable; since I
met you it has been filled, satisfied, and that even if I have received
what Madame de Lera dares to call--nothing!"

He spoke with a fervour, a conviction, which to the woman over whom he
was now leaning brought exquisite solace. At last he was speaking as she
had longed to hear him speak.

"You don't know," she whispered brokenly, "how happy you make me by
saying this to-night, Laurence. I have sometimes wondered lately if you
cared for me as much as you used to care?"

Vanderlyn's dark