e--when there are others
who, for a word, a glance, a smile, would barter--"

He pauses. His voice is trembling. His eyes are bent upon the ground as
though he is half afraid to meet her glance. There is genuine feeling in
his tone.

Dulce, impressed by his open agitation, in spite of herself, leans over
the balcony, and lets her fingers wander nervously amongst the leaves of
the Virginian creeper that has intertwined itself in the ironwork, and
is now fluttering within her reach. It is gleaming blood-red beneath the
kiss of the fickle moonbeams, that dance hither and thither amidst its
crimson foliage.

Plucking two or three of the reddest leaves, she trifles with them
gently, and concentrating all her attention on them, gives herself an
excuse for avoiding Stephen's earnest gaze. Her hands are unsteady. She
is affected by the sincerity of his manner; and just now, too, she is
feeling hurt and wounded, and, perhaps, a little reckless. Her
self-pride (that dearest possession of a woman) has sustained a severe
shock; for the first time she has been awakened to the fact that the
whole country considers her as naught in the eyes of the man whose wife
she has promised to be.

To prove to the country that she is as indifferent to Roger as he (it
appears) is to her, becomes a settled desire within her heart; the more
she dwells upon this, the more sweet it seems to her that there should
be another man willing to be her slave; another in whose sight she is
all that a woman should be, and to whom each tone of her voice, each
glance of her soft eyes, is as a touch of heaven!

Her silence emboldening Gower, he bends over her, and lays his hand upon
the slender fingers that are still holding the scarlet leaves of the
Virginian creeper.

"Do you understand me?" he asks, nervously.

"Yes."

She feels almost constrained to answer him honestly, so compelling is
the extreme earnestness of his manner.

"It seems a paltry thing now to say that I love you," goes on Gower in
an impassioned tone that carries her away with it, now that she is sore
at heart; "You _know_ that. You have known it for weeks." He puts aside
with a gesture her feeble attempt at contradiction. "Every thought of my
heart is yours; I live only in the hope that I shall soon see you again.
Tell me now honestly, would it be possible to break off this engagement
with your cousin?"

At this she shrinks a little from him, and a distressed look comes into
her b