as he made this assertion, and the next moment Miss Davenport, who must have come up in time to catch the last words, had burst into the center of the group.
"It is not true!" she cried. "Alfred, you must not believe him!"
"Not true?" exclaimed Alfred, Sophia, Miss Tyrrell, and Sir William, in the same breath.
"No!" said Miss Davenport; "at least, if he has really engaged himself, it is within the last few minutes, and with the chivalrous intention of shielding me! Peter, I will not be shielded by such means. Our love is too precious to be publicly denied. I cannot suffer it; I will acknowledge it, though it costs me my life! You," she added, turning to Sophia,—"you can prove that I speak the truth. It was to you that I confided, that day we met on deck, the story of our fatal attachment."
"I really think you must be mistaken," said Sophia, coldly. "If you confided such a story to anybody, it could not have been to me; for, until a few minutes ago, I had never set foot upon this ship."
How Sophia could stand there and, remembering, as she must do, her recent appropri-
