"The answer might not be palatable."
"No, it may not. Nevertheless, I pray you give it me. You are killing me, Georgina."
She looked up hastily; she saw that the bright, transparent complexion of the face had turned to a deadly whiteness; and, perhaps, in that one moment, Georgina Beauclerc's heart smote her with a slight reproach of cruelty. But she may have deemed it well to put an end to the suspense, and she bent her head again as she spoke.
"Even though I had loved another, what of that? I don't admit that I have; and I say that it is a question you have no right to ask me. Harry! be reasonable; though I had loved you, it could not come to anything; you know it could not; so what does it signify?"
"But you have not loved me?"
"Well—no. Not in that way. Here's the dean coming in; and here's pompous old Ferraday. You must sing a song; papa's sure to ask for one."
She hastened from the piano, as if glad to escape. The dean did ask for a song. But when they came to look for him who was to sing it, he was nowhere to be seen.
"Bless me!" cried the dean, "I thought Henry Arkell was here. Where is he?"
"I dare say he has gone home for the 'Treasures of the Deep,' papa," readily replied Georgina. "Somebody asked him to fetch it just now."
He had not gone for the "Treasures of the Deep;" and, as she guessed pretty accurately, he had no intention of returning. He was walking slowly towards the master's house, his temporary home; his head was aching, his brain was burning, and he felt as if all life had gone out of him for ever. That she had been befooling him; that she loved Frederick St. John with an impassioned lasting love, appeared to him as clear as the stars in a frosty sky.