"Oh, I am sorry," I said, and I looked at him with a world of sympathy in my eyes.

"Dear little Miss Heather," he replied, "you needn't be sorry, for I assure you I am not."

"But why is it broken off?" I asked. "I thought when people were engaged that, if they were nice people, they considered it sacred, and—and kept engaged until they married."

"Oh, you dear little innocent!" he replied. "How little you know! Well, at any rate, I am not going to enlighten you with regard to the ways of this wicked world. The engagement is broken off, and I am glad of it. I didn't do it; she did. She has engaged herself now to another man, with five or six times my money. She is all right, and so am I."

Then I said slowly, "You puzzle me very much, Captain Carbury. I thought you were very, very fond of her."

He dug his stick into the gravel walk near; then he glanced round at me impatiently.

"You can put all that sort of thing into the past tense," he said. "Now tell me about yourself. How are you getting on?"

"I am not getting on," I answered.

"You surprise me! I hear quite the contrary I hear that dear little Miss Heather, who was so kind to me, and did me such immense honour as to put me into her gallery of heroes, is making quite a stir in society. When society begins to appreciate you, Miss Heather, you ought to consider yourself in luck. They say—and by 'they' I mean the people who live in this wicked world, the people who are 'in the know,' you understand—that if you are not engaged to be married before this time next year, you will be the height of the fashion."

I found myself colouring very deeply.

"I don't intend to be either engaged or married," I said; "and to make a stir in society is about the very last thing I should wish."

"I wonder what you would wish?" he asked, looking at me attentively.

I looked back at him. Then I said, in a low, quiet voice:

"I can't quite understand why it is, but I find it very easy to tell you things. Perhaps it is because you are in my gallery and I am in yours."

"Yes, of course, that is the reason," he replied, with one of his quick, beautiful smiles.

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