“Ah, me!” she moaned, “you will not understand; it is not that love, Edgar.  I want to pass my life by your side.  I want your joys to be mine—­your sorrows to be mine, darling; I want to share your interests.  Will you not understand?”

“I do understand, Coralie.  All the love of my heart is given—­gone from me.  Only this day I asked Miss Thesiger to be my wife, and she consented.  All my love, my faith, my loyalty are hers.”

I shall never forget how that fair woman rose and looked at me.  The love-light and the mist of tears died from her eyes.  All the lovely color faded from her face.

“You have slain me; you have given me, my death-blow!”

“Nay, Coralie; you are too sensible and brave.”

She waved her hand with a gesture commanding silence.

“Do not seek to comfort me,” she said.  “You cannot.  I have humiliated myself in vain.  I have shown the depth of my heart, the very secrets of my soul, only that you may laugh at me with your fair-faced Agatha.”

“Hush, Coralie; you have no right to say such things; what you have just said will never pass my lips.  I shall not even think of it.  You cannot suspect me of the meanness to talk to Miss Thesiger of anything of the kind.”

She looked at me with a dazed face, as though she could barely grasp my meaning.

“Tell me it again,” she said.  “I cannot believe it.”

“Listen, Coralie:  I love Agatha Thesiger with all my heart, and hope very soon to make her my wife.  I love her so dearly that I have no room in my heart for even a thought of any other woman.”

Her face grew ghastly in its pallor.

“That is sufficient,” she said; “now I understand.”

“We will both forget what has been said tonight, Coralie; we will never think of it, but for the future be good cousins and good friends.”

“No,” she said, proudly; “there can be no friendship between us.”

“You will think better of it; believe me, you have no truer friends than Clare and myself.”

“If I ask for bread and you give me a stone, is that anything to make me grateful?  But I declare to you, Sir Edgar Trevelyan, that you have slain me; you have slain the womanhood in me tonight by the most cruel blow!”

She looked so wild, so white, so despairing, I went up to her.

“Coralie,” I said, “forget all this nonsense and be your own bright self again.”

“My own bright self will never live again; a man’s scorn has killed me.”

Suddenly, before I knew what she was doing, she had flung herself in a fearful passion of tears in my arms.  She was sobbing with her face close to mine and her hot hands clinging to me.

“With it all, Edgar, she does not love you; she loved Miles; she loves Crown Anstey, and not you.  Forget her, dear; give her up.  I love you.  She is cold and formal and prudish; she is not capable of loving you as I do.  She loves your fortune, not you, and I—­oh, I would die if you bid me!  Give her up, Edgar, and love me!”