the fashionable novel, and modern cynicism
had taught her to expect little from human nature--a dangerous lesson,
for it eases responsibility, and responsibility is the Ten Commandments
rolled into a compact whole, suitable for the pocket.

She expected of no man--not even of Jack--that perfect faithfulness in
every word and thought which is read of in books. And it is one of the
theories of the day that what one does not expect one is not called upon
to give. Jack, she reflected, was too much a man of the world to expect
her to sit and mope alone. She was apparently incapable of seeing the
difference between that pastime and sitting on the sea-wall behind a
large flowering currant-tree with a man who did not pretend to hide the
fact that he was in love with her. Some women are thus.

"I do not know if you have learnt much," he answered. "But I have."

"What have you learnt?" she asked in a low voice, half-fascinated by the
danger into which she knew that she was running.

"That I love you," he answered, standing squarely in front of her,
and announcing the fact with a deliberate honesty which was rather
startling. "I was not sure of it before, so I stayed away from you for
three weeks; but now I know for certain."

"Oh, you mustn't say that!"

She rose hastily and turned away from him. There was in her heart a
sudden feeling of regret. It was the feeling that the keenest sportsman
sometimes has when some majestic monarch of the forest falls before his
merciless rifle--a sudden passing desire that it might be undone.

"Why not?" he asked. He was desperately in earnest, and that which
made him a good sportsman--an unmatched big-game hunter, calm and
self-possessed in any strait--gave him a strange deliberation now, which
Millicent Chyne could not understand. "Why not?"

"I do not know--because you mustn't."

And in her heart she wanted him to say it again.

"I am not ashamed of it," he said, "and I do not see why I should not
say it to you--or to any one else, so far as that goes."

"No, never!" she cried, really frightened. "To me it does not matter so
much. But to no one else--no, never! Aunt Marian must not know it--nor
Sir John."

"I cannot see that it is any business of Sir John's. Of course, Lady
Cantourne would have liked you to marry a title; but if you cared for me
she would be ready to listen to reason."

In which judgment of the good lady he was no doubt right--especially if
reason spoke with t