"What?"

"Abhorrence!" she said almost fiercely, and rose to her feet, with a wild
defying start.

"If that be so," I said gently, "you would not grieve were you never again
to see him--"

"But I shall see him again," she murmured in a tone of weary sadness, and
sank back once more into her chair.

"I think not," said I, "and I hope not. And now hear me and heed me,
Lilian. It is enough for me, no matter what your feelings towards
another, to learn from yourself that the affection you once professed for
me is gone. I release you from your troth. If folks ask why we two
henceforth separate the lives we had agreed to join, you may say, if you
please, that you could not give your hand to a man who had known the taint
of a felon's prison, even on a false charge. If that seems to you an
ungenerous reason, we will leave it to your mother to find a better.
Farewell! For your own sake I can yet feel happiness,--happiness to hear
that you do not love the man against whom I warn you still more solemnly
than before! Will you not give me your hand in parting--and have I not
spoken your own wish?"

She turned away her face, and resigned her hand to me in silence.
Silently I held it in mine, and my emotions nearly stifled me. One
symptom of regret, of reluctance, on her part, and I should have fallen at
her feet, and cried, "Do not let us break a tie which our vows should have
made indisoluble; heed not my offers, wrung from a tortured heart! You
cannot have ceased to love me!" But no such symptom of relenting showed