only. Will she come?"

Once more he opened his arms, and in his brilliant eyes she read his
meaning.

The revelation burst upon her like the unexpected blinding glow of
sunshine smiting one who approaches the mouth of a cavern, in whose
chill gloom, after weary groping, all hope had died. She felt giddy,
faint, and the world seemed dissolving in a rosy mist.

"My Lily, my proud little flower! You will not come? Then Erle Palma
must take his own, and hold it, and wear it for ever!"

He folded his arms around her, strained her to his bosom, and laid
his warm trembling lips on hers. What a long passionate kiss, as
though the hunger of a lifetime could never be satisfied.

After his stern self-control and patient waiting, the proud man who
had never loved any one but the fair young girl in his arms,
abandoned himself to the ecstasy of possession. He kissed the
eyebrows that were so lovely in his sight, the waving hair on her
white temples, and again and again the soft sweet trembling lips that
glowed under his pressure.

"My precious violet eyes, so tender and holy. My silver Lily, mine
for ever. Erle Palma's first and last and only love!"

When, with his cheek resting on hers, he told her why his sense of
honour had sealed his lips while she was a ward beneath his roof,
entrusted by her mother to his guardianship, and dwelt upon the
suffering it had cost him to know that others were suing for her
hand, trying to win away the love, which his regard for duty
prevented him from soliciting, she began to realize the strength
and fervour of the affection that was now shining so deliciously
upon her heart. She learned the fate of the glove he had found on
his desk and locked up; of the two faded white hyacinths he had
begged and worn in his breast pocket because they had rested on her
hair; of the songs he wanted simply for the reason that he had heard
them on the night when she fainted and he had first kissed her cold
unconscious lips.

Would the brilliant New York Bar have recognized their cool,
inflexible, haughty favourite in the man who was pouring such fervid
passionate declarations into the small pearly ear that felt his lips
more than once?

Erle Palma had much to tell to the woman of his love, much to explain
concerning the events of the day when Elliott Roscoe witnessed her
first interview with Peleg Peterson, and subsequently aided in his
arrest, but this morning long audience was denied him.

In the mid