"Oh, I must have had it in my blood to know the difference between dulness and enjoyment," she said lightly; "otherwise----"

"Well--otherwise?"

"Otherwise," she said smiling at him, "how should I know it now? There is a vast difference between dulness and enjoyment--as vast as that between happiness and misery; and I know them both."

"Cynthia," he said, rising and leaning towards her--"Cynthia, child, you do enjoy your present life--you are happy, are you not?"

She looked at him silently. The smile faded; he noticed that her bosom rose and fell more quickly than before.

"You think I ought to be?" she said. "But why? Because I have been in Italy--because I have had a little success or two--because people say that I am handsome and that I have a voice? That is not my idea of happiness, Mr. Lepel, if it is yours; but you know as well as I do that it is not happiness at all. It is excitement if you like, but nothing else--not even enjoyment."

"What would you call enjoyment then, Cynthia? What is your idea of happiness?" Her hurried breathing seemed to have infected him with like shortness of respiration; there was a fire in his eyes.

"Oh," she said looking away from him and holding her hands tightly clasped upon her knee, "it is not different from other women's ideas of happiness--it is quite commonplace! It means a safe happy home of my own, with no reasonable fear that distrust or poverty or sin should invade it--congenial work--a companion that I could love and trust and work for and care for----" she stopped short.

"A husband," said Hubert slowly, "and children to kiss your lips and call you 'Mother,' and a man's love to soften and sweeten all the days of your life." She nodded, but did not speak. "And I," he said, with an irrepressible sigh--"I want a woman's love--I want a home too, and all the sweet charities of home about me. Yes, that is happiness."

"It will be yours by-and-by, I suppose," said Cynthia, in a rather choked voice--he told her that he was engaged to be married.

"I see no probability," he answered drily. "She--her guardian will not allow an engagement."

"But--she loves you?"

"I do not think so; I am sure indeed that she does not!"

"And you--you care for her?"

"No; by Heaven, I do not!"

"Then by-and-by you will meet somebody whom you love."

"I have met somebody now," said Hubert, in a curiously dogged tone; "but, as I am sure that she does not care a pin for me, there is no harm in letting the secret out."

"Who is she?"--in a startled tone.

"She is a singer. She used to be an actress; but she has a magnificent voice and is in training for the operatic stage. She will be a great star one day, and I shall worship her from afar. But I have never met anybody in the world who will ever be to me what that woman might have been."

"How do you know," said Cynthia, in a scarcely audible voice, "that you are not so much to her as she is--you say--to you?"

"How do I know? I am certain of it--certain that she regards me as a useful, pleasant friend who is anxious to do his best for her in the musical world, and nothing more. If I dreamed for a moment that I was nearer and dearer to her than that, I should hold my tongue. But, as it is, knowing that I am not worthy to kiss the hem of her garment, and that if she knew all my unworthiness she would be the first to bid me begone, I do not fear--now, once and once only--to tell her that I love her with all my heart and mind and body and soul, and that I ask nothing from her but permission to love on until the last day of my life."

"Now, once and once only?" repeated Cynthia.

She looked up and saw that he stood ready for departure. His face was pale, his lips were tightly set, and his eyes sent forth a strange defiant gleam which she had never seen before. He made three strides towards the door before she collected herself sufficiently to start up and speak.

"No--no--you must not go! One moment! And what if--if"--she could hardly get out the words--"what if the woman that you loved had loved you too, ever since you saved her from poverty and disgrace and worse than death in the London streets?"

She held out her arms to him, as if praying him to save her once again.

He stood motionless, breathing heavily, swaying a little, as if impelled at one moment to turn away and at another to meet her extended hands.

"Then," he said at last--"then I should be of all men most miserable!"

It was illogical, it was weak, it was base, after those words, to yield to the tide of passion which for the first time in his life surged up in his soul with its full strength and power. And yet he did yield--why, let those who have loved like him explain. As soon as he had uttered his protest, and it seemed as if the battle should be over and these two divided from each other for evermore, the two leapt together, and were clasped in each other's arms.

She lay upon his breast; his arms were around her, his lips pressed passionately to hers. In the ecstacy of that moment conscience was forgotten, the past was obliterated; nothing but the fire and energy of love remained. And then--quite suddenly--came a revulsion of feeling in the mind of the man whose guilt had, after all, not left him utterly without remorse. To Cynthia's terror and dismay, he sank upon his knees before her, and, with his arms clasped round her waist, and his face pressed close to her slight form, burst into a passion, an agony of sobs. She did not know what to do or say! she could but entreat him to be calm, repeating that she loved him--that she would love him to the last day of her life. It was of no use, the agony would have its way.

He did not try to explain his singular conduct. When he rose at last, he kissed her on the forehead, and, murmuring, somewhat inarticulately, that he would see her on the morrow, he left the room. She heard the street door close, and knew, with a strange mixture of fear and joy, that he had gone, and that he loved her. In the consciousness of this latter fact she had no fear of the morrow.

He might perhaps have kept his lips from an avowal of love, which was afterwards bitter to him as death if he had known that at St.

Elizabeth's Cynthia West had once been known as the convict's daughter, Jane Wood.

CHAPTER XXVII.

"Look here, Cynthia," he said abruptly, when he met her the next morning--"this won't do! I was to blame; I made a fool of myself last night."

"What--in saying that you loved me?" she inquired.

"Yes--in saying that I loved you. You know very well that I did not intend to say it."

"Does that matter?" she asked, in a low voice. She had taken his hand, and was caressing his strong white fingers tenderly.

"I did it against my conscience."

"Because of that other girl?"

He considered a moment and then said "Yes." But he was not prepared for the steadily penetrating gaze which she immediately turned upon him.

"I don't quite believe that," she said slowly.

"You doubt my word?"

"Yes," said Cynthia, in a dry matter-of-fact way; "I doubt everybody's word. Nobody tells the whole truth in this agreeable world. You forget that I am not a baby--that I have knocked about a good deal and seen the seamy side of life. Perhaps you would like me better if I had not? You would like me to have lived in the country all my life, and to be gentle and innocent and dull?"

"I could not like you better than as you are," he said, passing one arm round her.

"That's right. You do love me?"

"Yes, Cynthia."

"That is not a very warm assurance. Do you feel so coldly towards me this morning?"

"My dearest--no!"

"That's better. Dear Hubert---- may I call you Hubert?"--he answered with a little pressure of his arm--"if you really care for me, I can say what I was going to say; but, if you don't--if that was how you made a fool of yourself by saying so when you did not mean it--then tell me, and I shall know whether to speak or to hold my tongue."