Again he paused, but Philip stood silent, with downcast eyes and a sullen frown upon his brow. Clifford saw that he was incorrigible, and, repressing a sigh of regret for a life so warped by selfishness, he observed:
"Possibly I am unwise in appealing to you in any such way; but I believe the day will yet come when you will regret some of these things."
He turned and went swiftly back the way he had come, while Philip watched him with a lowering brow and a look of hate in his eyes.
Suddenly a slight rustle caused him to turn and look behind him, when an exclamation of dismay escaped him, for, leaning against the tall vase, and pale as the snowy dress she wore, he saw Gertrude Athol standing not a dozen feet from him.
"Gertrude!" the young man faltered, for he knew from her manner that she must have overheard much of what had passed--how much he dared not think.
The sound of his voice acted like a shock of electricity upon her. She stood erect, swept into the path where he was, and confronted him.
"I have heard all," she said in a cold, quiet tone. "I had no intention of playing the eavesdropper, however. Miss Heatherford and I were here in the conservatory a while ago, when my father called me, but he only wished to ask me a question or two, and then I thought that I would come back to Miss Heatherford, and that is how I happened to be here. I came just as you were declaring that she and she alone held your life and your future in her hands----" and the beautiful girl's nostrils dilated with supreme contempt as she thus repeated his words. "Therefore, considering the relations that have existed between you and me for the last four years, I felt that I had the right to hear you out and learn just to what extent I had been made your dupe----"
"Hush!" she commanded imperatively. "I will not listen to a word of extenuation from you--there is none--there can be none. I will say my say out, and that will end everything between us. I have long felt that I might perhaps be building my hopes for the future upon shifting sand--there have been many indications of it, but I hoped that you might change for the better--that your good qualities would in the end overbalance your weakness. For more than four years I have worn your ring, believing myself pledged to you," Gertrude went on, as she calmly began to unlace the glove on her left hand, "but to-night you have said in my presence that for many years you have been betrothed to another--that you have loved--worshiped that other."