“She said she should be here,” said Mr. Preston, extremely annoyed at being entrapped, as he now felt he had been, into an interview with Miss Gibson. Molly hesitated a little before she spoke. He was determined not to break the silence; as she had intruded herself into the affair, she should find her situation as awkward as possible.

“At any rate, she sent me here to meet you,” said Molly. “She has told me exactly how matters stand between you and her.”

“Has she?” sneered he. “She is not always the most open or reliable person in the world!”

Molly reddened. She perceived the impertinence of the tone; and her temper was none of the coolest. But she mastered herself and gained courage by so doing.

“You should not speak so of the person you profess to wish to have for your wife. But, putting all that aside, you have some letters of hers that she wishes to have back again.”

“I dare say.”

“And that you have no right to keep.”

“No legal, or no moral right? which do you mean?”

“I do not know; simply you have no right at all, as a gentleman, to keep a girl’s letters when she asks for them back again, much less to hold them over her as a threat.”

“I see you do know all, Miss Gibson,” said he, changing his manner to one of more respect. “At least she has told you her story from her point of view, her side; now you must hear mine. She promised me as solemnly as ever woman”——

“She was not a woman, she was only a girl, barely sixteen.”

“Old enough to know what she was doing; but I’ll call her a girl if you like. She promised me solemnly to be my wife, making the one stipulation of secrecy, and a certain period of waiting; she wrote me letters repeating this promise, and confidential enough to prove that she considered herself bound to me by such an implied relation. I don’t give in to humbug—I don’t set myself up as a saint—and in most ways I can look after my own interests pretty keenly; you know enough of her position as a penniless girl, and at that time with no influential connections to take the place of wealth and help me on in the world. It was as sincere and unworldly a passion as ever man felt; she must say so herself. I might have married two or three girls with plenty of money; one of them was handsome enough, and not at all reluctant.”

Molly interrupted him: she was chafed at the conceit of his manner. “I beg your pardon, but I don’t want to hear accounts of young ladies whom you might have married; I come here simply on behalf of Cynthia, who does not like you, and who does not wish to marry you.”

“Well, then, I must make her ‘like’ me, as you call it. She did ‘like’ me once, and made promises which she will find it requires the consent of two people to break. I don’t despair of making her love me as much as ever she did—according to her letters, at least—when we are married.”

“She will never marry you,” said Molly firmly.

“Then, if she ever honours any one else with her preference, he shall be allowed the perusal of her letters to me.”

Molly almost could have laughed, she was so secure and certain that Roger would never read the letters offered to him under these circumstances; but then she thought that he would feel such pain at the whole affair, and at the contact with Mr. Preston, especially if he had not heard of it from Cynthia first; and