egret at having kept you a prisoner in this blazing house? I
fear I have frightened you sorely, but---" And here, to my astonishment,
he found nothing to say, moved overmuch by some strong feeling, or
checked in his apologies by some great embarrassment.

Astonished, for he did not look like a man who could be lightly
disturbed, I glowed a fiery red and put my hand out towards the door.
Instantly he found speech again.

"One moment," said he. "I feel that I ought to explain the surprise, the
consternation, which made me forget. You know this is not my house,
that I am here in trust for another, that the place is full of rare
treasures."

Had he stopped again? I was in such a state of inner perturbation that
I hardly knew whether he had ceased to speak or I to hear. Something,
I did not know what, had shaken my very life's center--something in the
shape of dread, yet so mixed with delight that my hand fell from the
knob I had been blindly groping for and sank heavily at my side. His
eyes had not left my face.

"May I ask whom I have the honor of addressing?" he asked, in a tone I
might better never have heard from his lips.

To this I must make reply. Shuddering, for I felt something uncanny
in the situation, but speaking up, notwithstanding, with the round and
vibrating tones I had inherited from my mother, I answered, with the
necessary simplicity:

"I am Delight Hunter, a country girl, sir, visiting the Vandykes."

A flash that was certainly one of pleasure lighted up his face with a
brilliance fatal to my poor, quivering girl's heart.

"Allow me, Miss Hunter, to believe that you will not bring down the
indignation of my neighbors upon me by telling them of my carelessness
and indiscretion." Then, as my lips settled into a determined curve,
he himself opened the door, and bowing low, asked if I would accept his
protection to the gate.

But at the rush of the night air, such a sensation of shame overpowered
me that I only thought of retreat; and, declining his offer with a
wild shake of the head, I dashed from the house and fled with an
incomprehensible sense of relief back to that of the Vandykes. The
servants, who had seen me rush towards Mr. Allison's, were still in the
yard watching for me. I did not vouchsafe them a word. I could hardly
formulate words in my own mind. A great love and a great dread had
seized upon me at once. A great love for the man by whose face I had
been moved for weeks and a great