only what they tell me, that my
lips report."

Keeping his left foot slightly raised from the floor, he pushed the
chair a little towards her, and himself followed it, resting his
weight partly on its back, while he hopped with his right foot. But
Elizabeth stayed him with a gesture of much imperiousness.

"What has such rubbish to do with your confession and your plot?" she
demanded.

"Can you not see?" And he now let some of his real agitation appear,
that it might serve as the lover's perturbation which it would be well
to display.

"My confession is of the instant yielding of my heart to the charms of
a goddess."

In those days lovers, real or pretended, still talked of goddesses,
flames, darts, and such.

"Who desired your heart to yield to anything?" was Miss Elizabeth's
sharply spoken reply.

"Beauty _commanded_ it, madam!" said he, bowing low over his
chair-back.

"So, then, there was no plot?" Her eyes flashed with indignation.

"A plot, yes!" He glanced sidewise at the clock, and drew self-reliance
from the very situation, which began to intoxicate him. "_My_ plot, to
attract you hither, by that message, that I might console myself for
my fate by the joy of seeing you!"

"The joy of seeing me!" She spoke with incredulity and contempt.

A glad boldness had come over Peyton. He felt himself masterful, as
one feels who is drunk with wine; yet, unlike such a one, he had
command of mind and body.

"Ay, joy," said he, "joy none the less that you are disdainful! Pride
is the attribute of queens, and tenderness is not the only mood in
which a woman may conquer. Heaven! You can so discomfit a man with
your frowns, _what_ might you do with your smile!"

He felt now that he could dissimulate to fool the very devil.

But Elizabeth, though interested as one may be in an oddity, seemed
not otherwise impressed. 'Twas something, however, that she remained
in the room to answer:

"I do not know what I have done with my frown, nor what I might do
with my smile, but, whatever it be, _you_ are not like to see!"

"That I know," said Peyton, and added, at a reckless venture, "and am
consoled, when I consider that no other man has seen!"

"How do you know that?"

"Your smile is not for any common man, and I'll wager your heart is as
whole as your beauty."

She looked at him for a moment of silence, then:

"I cannot imagine why you say all this," quoth she, in real
puzzlement.

"'Tis an easing to the tor