"And who is this wretch?" he cried in tones quivering with intense emotion.
The answer was so low that he bent his ear almost to her lips to catch it.
"Lyttleton!" he exclaimed, "Lysander Lyttleton? I know the man; and Marian, my poor deceived and wronged little sister, he is utterly unworthy of even your friendship; 'twould be the consorting of the dove with the vulture."
She gave a sharp cry of pain.
"O, Kenneth, Kenneth, you can't mean it?"
It was hard to see her suffer, but best that she should know the truth at once. In a few brief sentences, carefully worded to spare her as much as possible, he told of Lyttleton's approaching marriage.
She did not cry out again, but asked, in a tone of quiet despair, to whom.
It cost Kenneth an effort to speak Nell's name, and something in his voice thrilled his listener with an instant consciousness of what she was to him.
She lifted her face to his, the wet eyes full of tender pity.
"You, too, Kenneth, my poor dear Kenneth?" she said in low, tremulous tones, "has he wronged you too? Then he is cast out of my heart forever. I cannot love one so base, so unworthy."