With bowed head Sir Frederick answered: “You are right, my Lord, and I will say what I can in your favour to Miss Meredith.”
“Spoke like an honest man. Fare ye well till next Wednesday, when I shall look for ye to a three-o’clock dinner.”
Whatever pain and shame the words cost him, honourably the baronet fulfilled his promise by going to the commissary’s quarters the following day and telling Janice the facts. The girl listened to his explanation with a face grave almost to sadness. “I—What you have told me, Sir Frederick,” she said gently at the end, “is of much importance to me just at this time, and I thank you.”
“I know, I know,” groaned the young officer, miserably, “and ’t is only part of my horrible run of luck that I should—that—ah—Take him, Miss Meredith, and end my torture.”
“Can you advise me to marry Lord Clowes?”
“After his generosity to me, in honour I must say nothing against him, but ’t is asking too much of human nature for me to aid his suit.”
“I—oh, I know not what to do!” despairingly wailed the girl. “Mommy says ’t is for me to decide, and dadda thinks I cannot do better, and to the ear it seems indeed the only thing to do. Yet I shudder every time I think of it, and twice, when I have dreamed that I was his wife, I have waked the whole house with my screams to be saved from him.”
“Miss Meredith,” burst out the baronet, “give me the right to save you. You know I love you to desperation; that I would live to make you—”
“Ah, pray, Sir Frederick,” begged Janice, “do not add to my pain and difficulty. What you wish—”
“I crave a pardon for my words. ’T was a moment’s selfish forgetfulness of you and of my own position, that shall not occur again.” Mobray stooped and kissed a loose end of the handkerchief the girl held, and hurried from the room.