ear to remain
longer in doubt: did you really write that poem you gave to Kate
Graeme--compose it, I mean, your own self?"

"I made no secret of that when I gave it her," said Donal, not
perceiving her drift.

"Then you did really write it?"

Donal looked at her in perplexity. Her face grew very red, and tears
began to come in her eyes.

"You must pardon me!" she said: "I am so ignorant! And we live in such
an out-of-the-way place that--that it seems very unlikely a real
poet--! And then I have been told there are people who have a passion
for appearing to do the thing they are not able to do, and I was
anxious to be quite sure! My mind would keep brooding over it, and
wondering, and longing to know for certain!--So I resolved at last that
I would be rid of the doubt, even at the risk of offending you. I know
I have been rude--unpardonably rude, but--"

"But," supplemented Donal, with a most sympathetic smile, for he
understood her as his own thought, "you do not feel quite sure yet!
What a priori reason do you see why I should not be able to write
verses? There is no rule as to where poetry grows: one place is as good
as another for that!"

"I hope you will forgive me! I hope I have not offended you very much!"

"Nobody in such a world as this ought to be offended at being asked for
proof. If there are in it rogues that look like honest men, how is any
one, without a special gift of insight, to be always sure of the honest
man? Even the man whom a woman loves best will sometimes tear her heart
to pieces! I will give you all the proof you can desire.--And lest the
tempter should say I made up the proof itself between now and to-morrow
morning, I will fetch it at once."

"Oh, Mr. Grant, spare me! I am not, indeed I am not so bad as that!"

"Who can tell when or whence the doubt may wake again, or what may wake
it!"

"At least let me explain a little before you go," she said.

"Certainly," he answered, reseating himself, in compliance with her
example.

"Miss Graeme told me that you had never seen a garden like theirs
before!"

"I never did. There are none such, I fancy, in our part of the country."

"Nor in our neighbourhood either."

"Then what is surprising in it?"

"Nothing in that. But is there not something in your being able to
write a poem like that about a garden such as you had never seen? One
would say you must have been familiar with it from childhood to be able
so to enter into the spiri