e him," said Emilia.

"Are you not cold?" he asked, for a diversion, though he had one of her
hands.

She gave him the other.

He could not quit them abruptly: nor could he hold both without being
drawn to her.

"What is it you say?" Wilfrid whispered: "men kiss us when we are happy.
Is that right? and are you happy?"

She lifted a clear full face, to which he bent his mouth. Over the
flowering hawthorn the moon stood like a windblown white rose of the
heavens. The kiss was given and taken. Strange to tell, it was he who
drew away from it almost bashfully, and with new feelings.

Quite unaware that he played the feminine part, Wilfrid alluded to her
flight from Richford, with the instinct to sting his heart by a revival
of his jealous sensations previously experienced, and so taste the luxury
of present satisfaction.

"Why did you run away from me?" he said, semi-reproachfully.

"I promised."

"Would you not break a promise to stay with me?"

"Now I would!"

"You promised Captain Gambier?"

"No: those poor people."

"You are sorry that you went?"

No: she was happy.

"You have lost your harp by it," said Wilfrid.

"What do you think of me for not guessing--not knowing who sent it?" she
returned. "I feel guilty of something all those days that I touched it,
not thinking of you. Wicked, filthy little creature that I was! I despise
ungrateful girls."

"I detest anything that has to do with gratitude," Wilfrid appended,
"pray give me none. Why did you go away with Captain Gambier?"

"I was very fond of him," she replied unhesitatingly, but speaking as it
were with numbed lips. "I wanted to tell him, to thank him and hold his
hand. I told him of my promise. He spoke to me a moment in the garden,
you know. He said he was leaving to go to London early, and would wait
for me in the carriage: then we might talk. He did not wish to talk to me
in the garden."

"And you went with him in the carriage, and told him you were so
grateful?"

"Yes; but men do not like us to be grateful."

"So, he said he would do all sorts of things on condition that you were
not grateful?"

"He said--yes: I forget: I do forget! How can I tell what he said?"
Emilia added piteously. "I feel as if I had been emptied out of a sack!"

Wilfrid was pierced with laughter; and then the plainspoken simile gave
him a chilling sensation while he was rising to the jealous pitch.

"Did he talk about taking you to Italy? Put your head