Yet she lingered.

The strange fascination of his half-savage melancholy, and a reproachfulness that seemed to arraign her, with the rest of the world, at the bar of his vague resentment, held the delicate fibres of her sensitive being as cruelly and relentlessly as the thorns of the cactus had gripped her silken lace.

Without knowing what she was saying, she stammered that she "was glad he connected her with his better fortune," and began to move away.

He noticed it with his sidelong lids, and added, with a slight bitterness:-- "I don't think I should have intruded here again, but I thought you had gone.

But I--I--am afraid you have not seen the last of me.