back) with bewitching incongruity on the
laughing child's face and the unripe grace of girlhood. Her moods were
endless, vying with one another in an ever undetermined struggle for the
prize of greatest charm. For the most part she was merry, frank mirth
passing into sly raillery; now and then she would turn sad, sighing,
"Heigho, that I could stay in the sweet innocent country!" Or again she
would show or ape an uneasy conscience, whispering, "Ah, that I were
like your Mistress Barbara!" The next moment she would be laughing and
jesting and mocking, as though life were nought but a great
many-coloured bubble, and she the brightest-tinted gleam on it.

Are women so constant and men so forgetful, that all sympathy must go
from me and all esteem be forfeited because, being of the age of
eighteen years, I vowed to live for one lady only on a Monday and was
ready to die for another on the Saturday? Look back; bow your heads, and
give me your hands, to kiss or to clasp!

Let not you and I inquire
What has been our past desire,
On what shepherds you have smiled,
Or what nymphs I have beguiled;
Leave it to the planets too
What we shall hereafter do;
For the joys we now may prove,
Take advice of present love.

Nay, I will not set my name to that in its fulness; Mr Waller is a
little too free for one who has been nicknamed a Puritan to follow him
to the end. Yet there is a truth in it. Deny it, if you will. You are
smiling, madame, while you deny.

It was a golden summer's evening when I, to whom the golden world was
all a hell, came by tryst to the park of Quinton Manor, there to bid
Cydaria farewell. Mother and sisters had looked askance at me, the
village gossiped, even the Vicar shook a kindly head. What cared I? By
Heaven, why was one man a nobleman and rich, while another had no money
in his purse and but one change to his back? Was not love all in all,
and why did Cydaria laugh at a truth so manifest? There she was under
the beech tree, with her sweet face screwed up to a burlesque of grief,
her little hand lying on her hard heart as though it beat for me, and
her eyes the playground of a thousand quick expressions. I strode up to
her, and caught her by the hand, saying no more than just her name,
"Cydaria." It seemed that there was no more to say; yet she cried,
laughing and reproachful, "Have you no vows for me? Must I go without my
tribute?"

I loosed her hand and stood away fro