"How pale you look, Ethel, and your dear hand is icy-cold. Are you ill, dear?"
"I did not rest well last night," she replied evasively.
He stood still, with her hand still carelessly clasped in his, studying her face with anxious eyes, and with a half-sigh, he exclaimed:
"You were grieving perhaps over my loss of rank and fortune!"
"Yes," she replied frankly, and drew her hand away so gently that he scarcely noticed it.
Ethel's dark head drooped a little as if in shame, and she murmured hoarsely:
"Arthur, you will despise me when you learn the truth. I—I—am very ambitious. I valued your rank and fortune highly. I had set my heart on having a title. But I loved you, too, or—thought I did. But now I find——"
She paused, unable to continue for a moment, and Arthur, looking steadily at her, began to comprehend her drift.
He began to despise her, but he would not help her out by one poor word.
He saw the white hands writhing in and out of each other, saw her look at him quickly, then drop her eyes again, but he did not dream what was in that swift look, the momentary hope, the succeeding despair.