"Edgar!" cried the one.
"Frank!" exclaimed the other.
"You have misled me," accused Frank; "you do love her, or you would not be here."
"Love whom?" asked Edgar, bitterly.
"Hermione."
"Does Hermione tend the flowers?"
"Ah!" ejaculated Frank, understanding his friend for the first time; "it is Emma you are attached to. I see! I see! Forgive me, Edgar; passion is so blind to everything but its own object. Of course it is Emma; why shouldn't it be!"
Yet for all its assurance his voice had strange tones in it, and Edgar, already annoyed at his own self-betrayal, looked at him suspiciously as they drew away together towards the main street.
"I am glad to find this out," said Frank, with a hilarity slightly forced, or so thought his friend, who could not know what thoughts and hopes this discovery had awakened in the other's breast. "You have kept your secret well, but now that I know it you cannot refuse to make me your confidant, when there is so much to tell involving my happiness as well as your own."
"I have no happiness, Frank."