'Oh, how brave and generous you are to threaten and torture a poor, weak girl whom you call an old friend, and under your own roof!'
'And the dear dove of Florian—Florian the private soldier!' he sneered fiercely.
'How horrible, how cruel!' she wailed, and covered her eyes with her hands.
'Never mind,' he resumed banteringly, 'you have got back your locket again.'
'I wonder how you dare to refer to it!' she exclaimed, and for a moment the angry gleam of her eyes was replaced by a soft, dreamy smile, as she recalled the time and place when Florian clasped the locket round her neck, when the bells of Revelstoke Church were heard on the same breeze that wafted around them the perfumes of the sweetbriar and wild apple blossoms in the old quarry near the sea, which was their trysting-place. How happy they were then, and how bright the future even in its utter vacuity, when seen through the rosy medium of young love!
Shafto divined her thoughts, for he said with jealous anger—
'You used the term dare with reference to your precious locket?'
'Yes; the locket of which you, Shafto Gyle, deprived me with coarse violence, like—like——'
'Well, what?'
'The garotters who are whipped in prison!'