many Ina, and that he would love Ina more truly than even he had loved herself. "Frank," she said, "is it to be so?"
"Yes, if you wish it, Elsie," he answered, in a choked voice.
She took his hand and kissed it. He gave up his dream silently, struggling to hide from her what it cost him. Presently he knew that her tears were falling upon his hand.
"Don't cry, Elsie," he said huskily. "I shall get over it. If I take it badly just at first, remember that I have loved you very much, and that I have wanted you for long. I am not going to make it harder for you. I shall ride back to Tunimba now, and when you see me again we shall be as you say, brother and sister. Good-bye, my dear; and Heaven bless your choice."
He left her without another word. Elsie flung herself upon the chair where he had sat and wept long and bitterly. She was not the only one who wept over Frank's disappointment. Ina Gage was crying too, in the solitude of her widowed chamber; and not for the dead Horace. She knew what was Lady Waveryng's errand, when Em came to her door, and asked to speak to her.
Em's eyes, she fancied, were red, too. "He wants to see you, to say good-bye. He is going away; he tells me that his engagement is broken off."
"Broken off!" Ina repeated in a dazed sort of way. "And I tried so hard to bring it about! But oh! Em, it's best like this."
"I suppose it is," said Lady Waveryng, a little dryly. "But it's hard not to feel for Frank Hallett. She would be safer with him than with Morres Blake."
Ina went into the parlour, where Frank, booted and spurred, was waiting.
"Ina, you know how it is," he said, without any preamble. "She will marry Blake, I suppose, and I can't be surprised since she loves him; but keep her from doing it too soon, for her own sake; not for mine," he added, hastily. "That's all over now."
