ung
man from London and foreign cities, used now to the strictest company
manners, and ladies who almost think it vulgar to smile broad! How could
ye do it, Avice?'

'I--I didn't think about how I was altered!' said the
conscience-stricken girl. 'I used to kiss him, and he used to kiss me
before he went away.'

'But that was years ago, my dear!'

'O yes, and for the moment I forgot! He seemed just the same to me as he
used to be.'

'Well, it can't be helped now. You must be careful in the future. He's
got lots of young women, I'll warrant, and has few thoughts left for
you. He's what they call a sculptor, and he means to be a great genius
in that line some day, they do say.'

'Well, I've done it; and it can't be mended!' moaned the girl.

Meanwhile Jocelyn Pierston, the sculptor of budding fame, had gone
onward to the house of his father, an inartistic man of trade and
commerce merely, from whom, nevertheless, Jocelyn condescended to accept
a yearly allowance pending the famous days to come. But the elder,
having received no warning of his son's intended visit, was not at home
to receive him. Jocelyn looked round the familiar premises, glanced
across the Common at the great yards within which eternal saws were
going to and fro upon eternal blocks of stone--the very same saws and
the very same blocks that he had seen there when last in the island,
so it seemed to him--and then passed through the dwelling into the back
garden.

Like all the gardens in the isle it was surrounded by a wall of
dry-jointed spawls, and at its further extremity it ran out into a
corner, which adjoined the garden of the Caros. He had no sooner reached
this spot than he became aware of a murmuring and sobbing on the other
side of the wall. The voice he recognized in a moment as Avice's, and
she seemed to be confiding her trouble to some young friend of her own
sex.

'Oh, what shall I DO! what SHALL I do!' she was saying bitterly. 'So
bold as it was--so shameless! How could I think of such a thing! He will
never forgive me--never, never like me again! He'll think me a forward
hussy, and yet--and yet I quite forgot how much I had grown. But that
he'll never believe!' The accents were those of one who had for the
first time become conscious of her womanhood, as an unwonted possession
which shamed and frightened her.

'Did he seem angry at it?' inquired the friend.

'O no--not angry! Worse. Cold and haughty. O, he's such a fashionable