"Your frankness emboldens me to ask another confidence," he said. "Miss Gordon, tell me the story Mrs. Merivale poured into your sympathetic ear this evening."
She drew back, indignant and amazed.
"Would you ask me to betray a woman's sacred confidence?" she cried.
He laughed aloud—harshly, sneeringly.
"Do you call that confidence which is poured into every stranger's ear? That figment of Maud Merivale's crafty brain?" he cried. "Tell me the pretty fiction she gave you, Miss Gordon, and then you shall hear my side of the story."
"If you wish me to congratulate you, Mr. Le Roy, I will do so now without waiting to hear more," she said, desperately, eager to escape this painful interview.
He caught her hand as she half arose, and gently forced her back to her seat.
"Do not leave me yet," he said. "Pshaw! I know her pitiful stereotyped story! We were lovers once and her parents parted us and sold her to an old man because he was richer than I! Is not that the amount of the pretty idyl, Miss Gordon?"
"Yes," she answered, wonderingly.
"I thought so—I have heard it often before. Now hear my side of the story, child. We were lovers in our young days—that is true. You would not believe that Maud is thirty, would you, Miss Gordon? My mother thought me too young to marry then, and besides, she did not wholly approve of my choice. The end justified her. We postponed the consummation of our bliss until I should come of age. Maud grew impatient. Old Midas Merivale met her, and—pardon the wretched slang, Miss Gordon—she 'went for him' and threw me over! To-night," he resumed, after a moment's pause, "she threw prudence and delicacy to the winds, begging me to forgive her and to take her back to my heart—swore that she had never ceased to love me. Can you guess what answer I made her?"