"It would be very cruel for me to let you keep on hoping like that, Lieutenant De Vere. I could never be yours if you waited months and years. I will tell you the truth. There is"—a gasp—"some one—some one else that I love."
A moment's dead silence. The girl drops her shamed face in her hands. Presently he says huskily, yet with manly courage:
"It is some fortunate suitor you have left in America. Let me congratulate you, Miss West."
But she answers, in a sad, shamed voice:
"No, you need not congratulate me. I am not any happier than you are. He—he does not love me."
"Does not love you? Then he must be a stock or a stone," De Vere says, indignantly.
"He is neither," says Leonora, with the pretty pensive smile she has worn throughout their interview. "But let us speak no more of it. I should not have confessed to you only to show you how futile it would be for you to go on loving me. I thought it but justice to you. It may make it easier for you to forget me."
"I shall never do that," he answers, with conviction.
"You think so now, but time will console you," smiling. "I shall be gone out of your life forever in a few weeks."
"Gone?" he echoes, blankly.