ked into each other's eyes for just
a moment, then I caught her to me and crushed her in my embrace.

"Mary,--Mary,--Mary!" I cried brokenly. "Mary,--Mary!"

Gently and shyly, but smiling in her gladness, she freed herself from
my enfolding arms.

"George,--sit down, dear. I have much to tell you before--before----"

A blush spread over her cheeks and she turned away in embarrassment.

"--Before what, Mary?" I craved.

"Before--I can listen to you.

"George!--I love you with all my heart. I have always loved you,--I
could not help myself. That, I think, is why I quarrelled with you
so,--at first. But I was afraid that my loving would avail me little
and would probably cause you pain, for I was pledged to marry a man I
did not love; and, because of that pledge, I was not free to give my
love to any other man.

"George!--that man is dead now. He died a month ago in a street riot
with some natives in Cairo.

"All his sins are covered up with him," she sighed. "And, after all,
maybe Harry Brammerton was not----"

"Harry Brammerton!--" I cried, springing up in a tremble of excitement.
"My God! Oh, my God! I thought,--I,--I understood,--I--I--oh, God!"

I clutched at the table for support as the awful truth began to dawn on
me.

Mary rose in alarm.

"Why! What is it? What have I said? George,--didn't you know?
Didn't I tell you before? You have heard of him?--you are acquainted
with him,--Viscount Harry Brammerton--"

"Oh! Mary, Mary," I cried huskily, "please,--please do not go on. It
is more than I can bear now.

"I didn't know. I,--I am that man's brother. I am George Brammerton."

She stood ever so quietly.

"You!--You!" she whispered. And that was all.

Thus we stood,--stricken,--speechless,--under the cloud of the
unexpected, the almost impossible that had come upon us.

Yet Mary, or rather Rosemary, was the first to regain her composure.
Kindly, sweetly, she came over to me and placed her hands on my
shoulders. Her brown eyes were wells of sympathy and tenderness.

"George,--we each must fight this out alone. Come back to me in the
morning. I shall be waiting for you then."

And I left her.

But it seemed to me as if the morning would never come.

Unable to bear the burden of my thoughts longer amid the confines of my
rooms, I went out at last into the moonlight, to wait the coming of the
dawn.

As I stood out on the cliffs,--where old Jake Meaghan so often used to
s