'Am I, then, to suppose that you have pleaded for me with Clare?'
'Yes, dear Trevor,' she replied, as her slender fingers tightened upon his.
'There was a time when I did not require even you, Ida, to do so for me,' he replied, mistaking, perhaps, her meaning, for he was oversensitive. 'That is all past and gone now; but in the same kind spirit may I not plead with you for one who was very dear to you once—poor Jerry Vane?'
She coloured deeply, and then grew very pale again, and while the long lashes of her soft eyes dropped, she said:
'Do not speak of this again, Trevor—my heart is in Beverley's grave.'
'Yet,' he urged gently, 'a time may come——'
'It will never come.'
'Poor Jerry—as he loved you once, he loves you still. I hope, dear Ida, you pardon me for speaking of this to you.'
'I do from my heart, Trevor; but tell me, in the time that you have seen me—I mean since your return—have you not been struck by a certain strangeness of action about me?'
'I confess that I have.'