“Will you not, Flora, marry Lester Vane?” he said, in an undertone of deep earnestness.
“I will die first, Hal,” she replied, with equal fervour.
He pressed his hands to his throbbing temples. He laid his clenched fist upon his wildly-beating heart. He thought of Flora’s beauty and her tenderness. Then he thought, too, of her guileless innocence.
A fearful struggle ensued between love, honour and duty.
She would fly with him and give her hand to him at a word. That he knew.
He so adored her, and his chances of obtaining her, save by elopement, were so very, very remote.
The temptation was a sore one to wrestle with.