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174 ation of the Time Cheque, tell such a downright fib as this, passed Peter's comprehension. But, as her statement was in his favor so far as it went, he knew better than to contradict it.

"Whether it was you or not," insisted Miss Davenport, "it is he and no one else who rendered my engagement to Alfred utterly repugnant to me! Can you look at him now, and doubt me longer?"

"So, Peter," said Sophia severely, "you could not even be faithful to your unfaithfulness!"

Miss Tyrrell made no comment, but she dropped his arm as if it had scorched her fingers, whereupon Miss Davenport clung to it in her stead, to Peter's infinite dismay and confusion.

"He is faithful!" she cried. "It is only a mistaken sense of honor that made him apparently false. Yes, Alfred, what I wrote to you, and the postscript he added, is the simple truth. We cannot command our own hearts. Such love as I once had for you is dead—it died on the fatal day which brought him across my path. We met—we love; deal