Myra Jerrold stood looking very calm and statuesque, with James Barron holding her hand.

“Yes,” he said, “I am going now, but only for a few hours. I cannot live away from you. Only a fortnight now, Myra, and then good-bye to cold England. I take you to a land of beauty, of sunny skies, and joy and love.”

“Can any land be as beautiful as that which holds one’s home?” she said.

“No,” replied Barron quickly, “but that will be your home.”

“Trinidad,” said Myra thoughtfully; “so many thousand miles away.”

“Bah! what are a few thousand miles now? A journey in a floating hotel to a place where you can telegraph to your father’s door—instantaneous messages, and receive back the replies.”

“But still so far,” said Myra dreamily.

“Try and drive away such thoughts, dearest,” whispered Barron. “I shall be there. And besides, Sir Mark will run over and see us; and Edith, too, with her husband.”

Myra’s manner changed. The dreaminess passed away and she looked quickly in her betrothed’s eyes.

“Yes, I always thought so,” he said merrily. “’Tis love that makes the world go round. That Mr Stratton, your old friend, is below. Don’t you understand?”

“No,” said Myra quietly, “not quite.”

“I think you do, dearest,” he said, trying to pass his arm round her, but she shrank gently away.

“Very well,” he said, kissing her hand, “I can wait. You will not always be so cold. Mr Stratton came to see your father on business, looking the lover from head to foot. I was sent up to you, and soon after our dear little Edie is summoned to the library. Come, don’t look so innocent, darling. You do understand.”

“That Mr Stratton has come to propose for Edie’s hand?”

“Of course.”

Myra’s brow contracted a little, and there was a puzzled look in her eyes as she said gently:

“Yes, he has been very attentive to her often. Well, I like Mr Stratton very much, Mr Barron.”

“James,” he said reproachfully.

“James,” she said, as if repeating a lesson, in a dreamy tone, and her eyes were directed toward the door.

“I like him, too, now that I am quite safe. There was a time, dear, when I first came here, and had my doubts. I fancied a rival in Mr Stratton.”

“A rival?” she said, starting and colouring. “Yes; but so I did in any man who approached you, dearest. But there never was anything—the slightest flirtation?”

“No, never,” she said quickly.

“Of course not; and I am so happy, Myra. You, so young and beautiful, to awaken first to love at my words. But are you not cruel and cold to me still? Our marriage so soon, and you treat me only kindly, as if I were a friend, instead of as the man so soon to be your husband.”

Myra withdrew her hand, for the door opened, and Edith entered the room, looking troubled and disturbed.

“Good-bye, then, once more, dearest,” said Barron, taking Myra’s hand, “till dinner time. Ah, Edie!” he said as he crossed to the door, which she was in the act of closing. Then, in a whisper: “Am I to congratulate you? My present will be a suite of pearls.”

Edie started, and Barron smiled, nodded, and passed out. As he descended the stairs his ears twitched, and his whole attention seemed to be fixed upon the library door, but he could hear no sound, and, taking his hat and gloves from the table, he passed out of the great hall, erect, handsome, and with a self-satisfied smile, before the butler could reach it in answer to the drawing room bell.

“Wedding a statue,” he said to himself. “But the statue is thickly gilt, and the marble underneath may be made to glow without a West Indian sun. So it was little Edie, then. He hasn’t bad taste. The dark horse was not dangerous after all, and was not run for coin.”

He was so intent upon his thoughts that he did not notice a hansom cab drawn up about a hundred yards from the house, in which a man was seated, watching him intently, and leaning forward more and more till he was about to pass, when there was a sharp pst-pst, which made him turn and scowl at the utterer of the signal.

“Hi! What a while you’ve been.”

“What the devil brings you here?” said Barron.

“To find you, of course,” said the man sourly. “Thought you’d be there.”

Barron looked quickly toward Sir Mark’s house, turned, and said sharply:

“What is it?”

“Jump in, and I’ll tell you,” whispered the man. “Getting hot.”

Barron jumped into the cab, which was rapidly driven off after instructions had been given through the trap to the driver, and the next minute it was out of sight.

Meanwhile, Edie had stood listening till she heard the hall door closed, and then turned to where her cousin was gazing thoughtfully at the window, not having moved since Barron left the room.

“Listening to his beloved footsteps, Myra?” said Edie sarcastically.

Myra turned upon her with her eyes flashing, but a smile came upon her lips, and she said:

“Well, Edie, am I to congratulate you, too?”

“What about?” flashed out the girl, bitterly mortified by the position in which she had been placed. “Being made a laughing stock for you?”

“What do you mean, dear?” said Myra, startled by the girl’s angry way; but there was no answer, and, full of eagerness now, Myra caught her hands. “Mr Barron said just now that Mr Stratton came to propose for you.”

“For me?” cried Edith bitterly. “Absurd!”

“But I always thought he was so attentive to you, dear. I always felt that you were encouraging him.”

“Oh, how can people be so stupidly blind!” cried Edie, snatching herself away. “It is ridiculous.”

“But, Edie, he was always with you. When he came here, or we met him and his friend at auntie’s—”

“Leave his friend alone, please,” raged the girl. Then, trembling at her sudden outburst, she continued seriously:

“Always with me! Of course he was: to sit and pour into my ears praises of you; to talk about your playing and singing, and ask my opinion of this and that which you had said and done, till I was sick of the man. Do you hear? Sick of him!”

A mist began to form before Myra’s eyes, gradually shutting her in as she sank back in her chair, till all around was darkness, and she could not see the unwonted excitement of her cousin, who, with her fingers tightly enlaced, kept on moving from place to place, and talking rapidly.

But there was a bright light beginning to flash out in Myra’s inner consciousness, and growing moment by moment, till the maiden calm within her breast was agitated by the first breathings—the forerunners of a tempest—and she saw little thoughts of the past, which she had crushed out at once as silly girlish fancies, rising again, and taking solid shape. Looks that had more than once startled her and set her thinking, but suppressed at once as follies, now coming back to be illumined by this wondrous light, till, in the full awakening that had come, she grasped the sides of the chair and began to tremble, as Edie’s voice came out from beyond the darkness, in which externals were shrouded, the essence of all coming home to her in one terrible reproach, as she told herself that she had been blind, and that the awakening to the truth had come too late.

“How could you—how could you!” cried Edie in a low voice, full of t............