"Perhaps he would like to be more; and perhaps there was once a moment when he might have been. But now I shall duly marry Lord Manister—if he has patience."
"Then why keep poor Lord Manister in suspense, Tiny, dearest?"
"Because I'm not in love with him; and I question whether he's as much in love with me as he imagines—I told him so."
"As it is, you may find it difficult to draw back."
"Exactly; so I am burning my boats. Jack, my dear, that's the last of you!"
Her voice satisfied Ruth, who, however, could see no more of her face than the curve of her cheek, and beyond it the blackened film curling from the burning cardboard.
CHAPTER XVII.
THE HIGH SEAS.
"He's done it at last!"
Erskine brandished a letter as he spoke, and then leant back in his chair with a guffaw that alarmed the Portuguese waiters. The letter was from Herbert Luttrell, a Cambridge man of one month's standing, of whose academic outset too little had been heard. His sisters were anxious to know what it was that he had done at last; they put this question in the same breath.