ugh to express content, yet there was the
vision still, a glorious picture in its fair round frame of moss and
greenery. Supposing it should remain there (her pale face flushed at the
thought) indelibly and forever, to tell the secret of her heart to all
the world! Then a whisper, that seemed to tremble beneath its freight of
love, whispered, "Harry! Harry!" and she looked up, and saw the
substance of the shadow, her lover, standing upon the little wooden
bridge!

Though Folly be near kin to Vice, she does not acknowledge the
relationship, and, to do Harry Trevethick justice, she would never have
made a midnight assignation with Richard in the Fairies' Bower. She was
more alarmed and shocked at the too literal fulfillment of her wish than
pleased to see him there. She shed tears for very shame. Whatever
reserve she had hitherto maintained, with respect to her affection for
him, had now, she perceived, been swept away by her own act. The scene
to which he had just been an unsuspected witness was more than
equivalent to a mere declaration of love: it was a leap-year offer of
her hand and heart. She had no strong-hold of Duty left to which to
betake herself, nor even a halting-place, such as coy maidens love to
linger at a little before they murmur, "I am yours."

There was nothing left her but revilings. She poured upon him a torrent
of contumely, reproaching him for his baseness, his cowardice, his
treachery in tracking her hither, like a spy, to overhear a confession
that should have been sacred with him of all men. Whatever that
confession might have been--and, to say truth, so utterly possessed had
she been by her passionate hopes, her loving yearnings, that she knew
not what she had merely felt, what uttered aloud--she now retracted it;
she had no tenderness for eaves-droppers, for deceivers, for--she did
not know what she was saying--for wicked young men. Above all things it
seemed necessary to be in a passion; to be as irritated and bitter
against him as possible. The copiousness of her vocabulary of abuse
surprised herself, and she did not shrink from tautology. She only
stopped at last for want of breath, and even then, as though she knew
how dangerous was silence, she bemoaned herself with sobs and sighs.

Then Richard, all tenderness and submission, explained his presence
there; showed how little he was to blame in the matter, and, indeed, how
there was neither blame nor shame to be attached to either of them