f the morning, and putting her lips together in the position
another such a one would demand, when she heard the identical operation
performed on the lawn, immediately beneath her window.

A kiss--not of the quiet and stealthy kind, but decisive, loud, and
smart.

Her face flushed and she looked out, but to no purpose. The dark rim
of the upland drew a keen sad line against the pale glow of the sky,
unbroken except where a young cedar on the lawn, that had outgrown its
fellow trees, shot its pointed head across the horizon, piercing the
firmamental lustre like a sting.

It was just possible that, had any persons been standing on the grassy
portions of the lawn, Elfride might have seen their dusky forms. But the
shrubs, which once had merely dotted the glade, had now grown bushy and
large, till they hid at least half the enclosure containing them. The
kissing pair might have been behind some of these; at any rate, nobody
was in sight.

Had no enigma ever been connected with her lover by his hints and
absences, Elfride would never have thought of admitting into her mind a
suspicion that he might be concerned in the foregoing enactment. But the
reservations he at present insisted on, while they added to the mystery
without which perhaps she would never have seriously loved him at all,
were calculated to nourish doubts of all kinds, and with a slow flush of
jealousy she asked herself, might he not be the culprit?

Elfride glided downstairs on tiptoe, and out to the precise spot on
which she had parted from Stephen to enable him to speak privately to
her father. Thence she wandered into all the nooks around the place from
which the sound seemed to proceed--among the huge laurestines, about the
tufts of pampas grasses, amid the variegated hollies, under the weeping
wych-elm--nobody was there. Returning indoors she called 'Unity!'

'She is gone to her aunt's, to spend the evening,' said Mr. Swancourt,
thrusting his head out of his study door, and letting the light of his
candles stream upon Elfride's face--less revealing than, as it seemed to
herself, creating the blush of uneasy perplexity that was burning upon
her cheek.

'I didn't know you were indoors, papa,' she said with surprise. 'Surely
no light was shining from the window when I was on the lawn?' and she
looked and saw that the shutters were still open.

'Oh yes, I am in,' he said indifferently. 'What did you want Unity for?
I think she laid supper before she