ing her
large eyes rest calmly upon his, and bravely suppressing the smile that
is dying to betray her; "really? How was it I didn't hear you? I was
sitting here all the time. These evergreens _must_ be thick! Do you know
I am horribly afraid I shall grow deaf in my old age, because there are
moments even now--such, for example, as the present--when I cannot bring
myself to hear _anything_."

This last remark contains more in it than appears to Mr. Gower.

"Yet, only last night," he says resentfully, "you told me it would be
dangerous to whisper secrets near you to another, as you had the best
ears in the world."

"Did I say all that? Well, perhaps. I am troublesome in that way
sometimes," says Miss Blount, shifting her tactics without a quiver.
"Just now," glancing at a volume that lies upon her lap, "I daresay it
was the book that engrossed my attention; I quite lose myself in a
subject when it is as interesting as this one is," with another glance
at the dark bound volume on her knee.

Gower stoops and reads the title of the book that had come between him
and the thoughts of his beloved. He reads it aloud, slowly and with grim
meaning--"_Notes on Tasmanian Cattle!_ It sounds enthralling," he says,
with bitter irony.

"Yes, doesn't it," says Miss Blount, with such unbounded audacity, and
with such a charming laugh as instantly scatters all clouds. "You must
know I adore cattle, especially Tasmanian cattle." As a mere matter of
fact she had brought out this book by mistake, thinking it was one of
George Eliot's, because of its cover, and had not opened it until now.
"Come and sit here beside me," she says, sweetly, bent on making up for
her former ungraciousness, "I have been so dull all the morning, and you
wouldn't come and talk to me. So unfeeling of you."

"Much you care whether I come to talk to you or not," says Mr. Gower,
with a last foolish attempt at temper. This foolish attempt makes Miss
Blount at once aware that the day is her own.

"You may sit on the edge of my gown," she says, generously--she herself
is sitting on a garden-chair made for one that carefully preserves her
from all damp arising from the damp, wintry grass; "on the _very_ edge,
please. Yes, just there," shaking out her skirts; "I can't bear people
close to me, it gives me a creepy-creepy feel. Do you know it?"

Mr. Gower shakes his head emphatically. No, he does not know the
creepy-creepy feel.

"Besides," goes on Dulce, confident