She did not, she could not reply; she felt confused; the blood rose to her cheek.

‘How changed is everything!’ continued Cadurcis.  ’To think the day should ever arrive when I should have to beg your permission to call you Venetia!’

She looked up; she met his glance.  It was mournful; nay, his eyes were suffused with tears.  She saw at her side the gentle and melancholy Plantagenet of her childhood.

‘I cannot speak; I am agitated at meeting you,’ she said with her native frankness.  ’It is so long since we have been alone; and, as you say, all is so changed.’

‘But are you changed, Venetia?’ he said in a voice of emotion; ’for all other change is nothing.’

‘I meet you with pleasure,’ she replied; ’I hear of your fame with pride.  You cannot suppose that it is possible I should cease to be interested in your welfare.’

’Your mother does not meet me with pleasure; she hears of nothing that has occurred to me with pride; your mother has ceased to take an interest in my welfare; and why should you be unchanged?’

‘You mistake my mother.’

‘No, no,’ replied Cadurcis, shaking his head, ’I have read her inmost soul to-day.  Your mother hates me; me, whom she once styled her son.  She was a mother once to me, and you were my sister.  If I have lost her heart, why have I not lost yours?’

‘My heart, if you care for it, is unchanged,’ said Venetia.

’O Venetia, whatever you may think, I never wanted the solace of a sister’s love more than I do at this moment.’

‘I pledged my affection to you when we were children,’ replied Venetia; ‘you have done nothing to forfeit it, and it is yours still.’

‘When we were children,’ said Cadurcis, musingly; ’when we were innocent; when we were happy.  You, at least, are innocent still; are you happy, Venetia?’

‘Life has brought sorrows even to me, Plantagenet.’

The blood deserted his heart when she called him Plantagenet; he breathed with difficulty.

‘When I last returned to Cherbury,’ he said, ’you told me you were changed, Venetia; you revealed to me on another occasion the secret cause of your affliction.  I was a boy then, a foolish ignorant boy.  Instead of sympathising with your heartfelt anxiety, my silly vanity was offended by feelings I should have shared, and soothed, and honoured.  Ah, Venetia! well had it been for one of us that I had conducted myself more kindly, more wisely.’

’Nay, Plantagenet, believe me, I remember that interview only to regret it.  The recollection of it has always occasioned me great grief.  We were both to blame; but we were both children then.  We must pardon each other’s faults.’