When he had been coming up, there had been apparently two alternatives before him: the glory of successful love,--which, indeed, had seemed to him to be a most improbable result of the coming interview,--and the despair and utter banishment attendant on disdainful rejection.

But his position was far removed from either of these alternatives.

She had almost told him that she would have loved him had she not been poor,--that she was beginning to love him and had quenched her love, because it had become impossible to her to marry a poor man.

In such circumstances he could not be angry with her,--he could not quarrel with her; he could not do other than swear to himself that he would be her friend.

And yet he loved her better than ever;--and she was the promised wife of his rival! Why had not Donald Bean's pony broken his neck?
"Shall we go down now ?" she said.
"Oh, yes." "You will not go on by the lake ?" "What is the use?
It is all the same now.