"Do you mean it?" she asked, earnestly. "The hand without the heart—would that content you?"
"Yes," he answered, bent on attaining his end, and foolishly believing that he could teach her to love him. "Yes; am I to have it, Bonnibel?"
"It shall be as you wish," she answered, quietly, and leaning slightly forward she laid in his the hand she had withdrawn a while ago.
Colonel Carlyle was beside himself with rapture.
"A thousand thanks, my beautiful darling," he exclaimed, pressing passionate kisses on the small hand. "Nay, do not take it away so soon, my love. Let me first place on it the pledge of our betrothal."
Still and white as marble sat Bonnibel while the enraptured colonel slipped over her taper forefinger a magnificent diamond ring, costly enough for a queen to wear. Its brilliant stone flashed fire, and the opal on her third finger seemed to grow dull and cold.
So Bonnibel had made her choice.
Her nature was tender, refined, luxurious. She was afraid of poverty and cold, and darkness; yet if Leslie Dane had lived she would have faced them all rather than have chosen Mrs. Arnold's alternative.
But Leslie Dane was dead. Life was over and done for her. There was nothing to do but to die or forget. Death would have come soon enough in the streets, perhaps, but she was so afraid of such a death. So she took "the goods the gods provided," and blindly threw herself forward into the whirling vortex of fate.