ng with us in the least. In
fact, it would be ever so nice, especially as I am in the habit of
going away to the sea-shore with my aunt every summer for six weeks,
and I was thinking how lonely it would be this year for father and
mother to stay here all by themselves."

The tower and the room under it! For me! What a contemptibly
little-minded and insignificant person she must think me. The words
with which I strove to tell her that I wished to live here as lord,
with her as my queen, would not come. She looked at me for a moment as
I stood on the brink of saying something but not saying it, and then
she turned suddenly toward the hammock.

"Did you see anything of a fan I left here?" she said. "I know I left
it here, but when I came yesterday it was gone. Perhaps you may have
noticed it somewhere--"

Now, the morning before, I had taken that fan home with me. It was an
awkward thing to carry, but I had concealed it under my coat. It was a
contemptible trick, but the fan had her initials on it, and as it was
the only thing belonging to her of which I could possess myself, the
temptation had been too great to resist. As she stood waiting for my
answer there was a light in her eye which illuminated my perceptions.

"Did you see me take that fan?" I asked.

"I did," said she.

"Then you know," I exclaimed, stepping nearer to her, "why it is I did
not leave this country as I intended, why it was impossible for me to
tear myself away from this house, why it is that I have been here every
morning, hovering around and doing the things I have been doing?"

She looked up at me, and with her eyes she said, "How could I help
knowing?" She might have intended to say something with her lips, but
I took my answer from her eyes, and with the quick impulse of a lover I
stopped her speech.

"You have strange ways," she said presently, blushing and gently
pressing back my arm. "I haven't told you a thing."

"Let us tell each other everything now," I cried, and we seated
ourselves in the hammock.

It was a quarter of an hour later and we were still sitting together in
the hammock.

"You may think," said she, "that, knowing what I did, it was very queer
for me to come out to you this morning, but I could not help it. You
were getting dreadfully careless, and were staying so late and doing
things which people would have been bound to notice, especially as
father is always talking about our enjoying the fresh hour