'Do not talk thus, I implore you, Jerry Vane.'
A gesture of impatience escaped Vane, yet he said, in a voice of tenderness:
'Oh, Ida, I do know it—too well and bitterly; for as I loved you in the past time, so do I love you still!'
'Pardon me, Jerry; you are indeed a kind and faithful——'
'Fool!' he interrupted her, bitterly. 'That is the word, Ida.'
'Nay, nay, don't say so,' she urged, with tremulous lips and moistened eyes.
'The first love of a woman's heart is a holy thing, Ida—and yours was mine.'
'Let us be friends,' said she, in a painful tone.
'I can never, never be your—mere friend, Ida!'
Like that of Clare and Trevor Chute, but a few days before, it was another romance of the drawing-room, the strange intercourse and perilous friendship between these two.