in heaven's name, are you? Tell me! I never could have
forgotten you."

"You have, I think," she said.

"Impossible that we could ever have met, and I forget you!"

She looked up at him.

"Do you remember Belthorpe?"

"Belthorpe! Belthorpe!" quoth Richard, as if he had to touch his brain
to recollect there was such a place. "Do you mean old Blaize's farm?"

"Then I am old Blaize's niece." She tripped him a soft curtsey.

The magnetized youth gazed at her. By what magic was it that this divine
sweet creature could be allied with that old churl!

"Then what--what is your name?" said his mouth, while his eyes added, "O
wonderful creature! How came you to enrich the earth?"

"Have you forgot the Desboroughs of Dorset, too?" she peered at him from
a side-bend of the flapping brim.

"The Desboroughs of Dorset?" A light broke in on him. "And have you
grown to this? That little girl I saw there!"

He drew close to her to read the nearest features of the vision. She
could no more laugh off the piercing fervour of his eyes. Her volubility
fluttered under his deeply wistful look, and now neither voice was high,
and they were mutually constrained.

"You see," she murmured, "we are old acquaintances."

Richard, with his eyes still intently fixed on her, returned, "You are
very beautiful!"

The words slipped out. Perfect simplicity is unconsciously audacious.
Her overpowering beauty struck his heart, and, like an instrument that
is touched and answers to the touch, he spoke.

Miss Desborough made an effort to trifle with this terrible directness;
but his eyes would not be gainsaid, and checked her lips. She turned
away from them, her bosom a little rebellious. Praise so passionately
spoken, and by one who has been a damsel's first dream, dreamed of
nightly many long nights, and clothed in the virgin silver of her
thoughts in bud, praise from him is coin the heart cannot reject, if it
would. She quickened her steps.

"I have offended you!" said a mortally wounded voice across her
shoulder.

That he should think so were too dreadful.

"Oh no, no! you would never offend me." She gave him her whole sweet
face.

"Then why--why do you leave me?"

"Because," she hesitated, "I must go."

"No. You must not go. Why must you go? Do not go."

"Indeed I must," she said, pulling at the obnoxious broad brim of her
hat; and, interpreting a pause he made for his assent to her rational
resolve, shyly looking at him, she he