and she has never been a friend to me or mine. I
do not know what to do or where to go for counsel."

"I heard a rumor that you were engaged to marry Mr. Hubert Lepel," said
the Rector gravely. "If that be true, he surely should be counted
amongst your friends."

"A man," said Enid, with bitterness of which he would not have thought
her capable, "who cares for me less than the last new play or the latest
_debutante_ at Her Majesty's! Should I call him a friend?"

"It is not true then that you are engaged to him?"

"I thought that I was," said Enid, still very bitterly. "He asked me to
marry him; I thought that he loved me, and I--I consented. But my uncle
has now withdrawn the half consent he gave. I am to be asked again, they
tell me, when I am twenty. I am their chattel--a piece of goods to be
given away and taken back. And then you ask me if I am happy, or if I
call the man who treats me so lightly a friend!"

"I see--I see. But matters may yet turn out better than you think. Mr.
Lepel is probably only kept back by the General's uncertainty of action.
I can quite conceive that it would put a man into a very awkward
position."

"I do not think that Hubert cares much," said Enid, with a little
sarcasm in her tone.

"He must care!" said Evandale impetuously.

"Why?" the girl asked, suddenly turning her innocent eyes upon him in
some surprise. "Why should he care?"

The Rector's face glowed.

"Because he--he must care." The answer was ridiculously inadequate, he
knew, but he had nothing else to say. "How can he help caring when he
sees that you care?--unless he has no more feeling than a log or a block
of stone." He smote his hand angrily against the trunk of a tree beside
him as he spoke.

Still Enid looked at him with the same expression of amazement. But
little by little his emotion seemed to affect her too--the blush to pass
from his face to her pale cheeks.

"But--but," she stammered, at length, "you are wrong--in that way--in
the way you think. I do not care."

"You do not care? For him do you not care?"

"As a cousin," said Enid faintly--"yes."

"Not as a lover?" The Rector spoke so low she could hardly hear a word.

"No."

"Not as a husband?"

"No."

"Then why did you consent to marry him?"

One question had followed another so naturally that the strangeness of
each had not been felt. But Enid's cheeks were crimson now.

"Oh, I don't know--don't ask me! I felt miserable, and I thought