s off her guard. So he ceased to alarm her by
pressing the question of marriage, but seduced her into a charming talk,
where the topics were not so personal, and only the tones of his voice
and the glances of his expressive eyes were caressing. He was on his
mettle to please her by hook or by crook, and was delightful,
irresistible. He set her at ease, and she began to listen more, and even
to smile faintly, and to look through the window a little less
perseveringly.

Suddenly the spell was broken for a while.

And by whom?

By the other.

Ay, you may well stare. It sounds strange, but it is true, that the poor
forlorn horseman, hanging like a broken man, as he was, over his tired
horse, and wending his solitary way from her he loved, and resigning the
field, like a goose, to the very rival he feared, did yet (like the
retiring Parthian) shoot an arrow right into that pretty boudoir and hit
both his sweetheart and his rival,--hit them hard enough to spoil their
sport, and make a little mischief between them--for that afternoon, at
all events.

The arrow came into the room after this fashion.

Kate was sitting in a very feminine attitude. When a man wants to look
in any direction, he turns his body and his eye the same way, and does
it; but women love to cast oblique regards; and this their instinct is a
fruitful source of their graceful and characteristic postures.

Kate Peyton was at this moment a statue of her sex. Her fair head leaned
gently back against the corner of the window-shutter; her pretty feet
and fair person in general were opposite George Neville, who sat facing
the window, but in the middle of the room; her arms, half pendent, half
extended, went listlessly aslant her, and somewhat to the right of her
knees, yet, by an exquisite turn of the neck, her gray eyes contrived to
be looking dreamily out of the window to her left. Still in this figure,
that pointed one way and looked another, there was no distortion; all
was easy, and full of that subtile grace we artists call repose.

But suddenly she dissolved this feminine attitude, rose to her feet, and
interrupted her wooer civilly.

"Excuse me," said she, "but can you tell me which way that road on the
hill leads to?"

Her companion stared a little at so sudden a turn in the conversation,
but replied by asking her, with perfect good-humor, what road she meant.

"The one _that gentleman on horseback has just taken_. Surely," she
continued, "th