"Because, as I said, you forbade me. Don't you know your word to me is law?"
"I don't think I know much," says Miss Peyton, with a sad little smile; but she lets her hand lie in his, and does not turn away from him. "Horace is in Ceylon," she says presently.
"Yes, and doing very well. Do you often think of him now?"
"Very often. I am glad he is getting on successfully."
"Have you forgotten nothing, Clarissa?"
"I have forgotten a great deal. How could it be otherwise? I have forgotten that I ever loved any one. It seems to me now impossible that I could have felt all that I did two months ago. Yet something lingers with me,—something I cannot explain." She pauses, and looks idly down upon her white hands, the fingers of which are twining and intertwining nervously.
"Do you mean that you have ceased to think of Horace in the light of a lover?" he asks, with an effort certainly, yet with determination. He will hear the truth now or never.
"What! wouldst thou have a serpent sting thee twice?" she says, turning to him with some passion; and then her anger fades, and her eyes fill with tears.
"If you can apply such a word to him, your love must be indeed dead," he says, in a curious tone, and, raising one of her hands, he lays it upon his breast.
"I wish it had never been born," she says, with a sigh, not looking at him.