"I am sorry for her," Mernside said impetuously, "and it doesn't seem fair that she should perhaps suffer for that idiotic young fool's love of practical jokes. Goodness knows what hopes she may have built upon this letter, and upon me. Of course, I can't give her a home, and I don't want to meet her—with a view to—anything. There is no place in my life for women, even as friends. There is no place in my life for more than—one woman," he ended vehemently.
"Hush!" she said softly. "Remember—you promised; and—if you break your promise, I can't ever let you come here again."
"I know—I know!" he cried, with an impetuosity very foreign to his usual self-control; "but, Margaret, is it to be like this always? Will a time never come when you—when I——"
She put out her hand and laid it over one of his, with a firm touch that had a curiously quieting effect upon him.
"You and I are great friends, as we have been for—longer than we care to think. But—there could not ever be an idea between us of anything else, not even the thought of such a thing. It is out of the question. It always has been out of the question. You know that as well as I do, and you must not come here at all, unless you can keep to our agreement in spirit as well as in letter."
"Is our friendship nothing to you?" he asked sullenly.
"It is—so much to me—that I will not risk spoiling it for ever," she said firmly; "but if you talk as you are talking now, I shall tell Elizabeth I cannot see you."
"And you are putting up this fence between us, when—I might be some comfort to you," he exclaimed, almost roughly, getting up as he spoke to lean against the mantelpiece, and glower threateningly down at her, "when every reasonable being would tell you that he——"
"Ah! hush!" she cried, and the sudden sharp anguish in her tones gave him pause; "don't let us go into it all over again. Whilst I feel—as I do feel—I must go on in the way I have marked out for myself, one can only follow the right as one sees it. Besides which——"
"Besides which—his little finger is more to you than——"