in Aunt
Priscilla's brain. I'll tell you what I think, Monica. I think Aunt
Priscilla was once in love with old Mr. Desmond, and mother cut her out;
and now, just because she has been disappointed in her own love-affair,
she wants to thwart you in yours."

"She doesn't, indeed. Any one but Mr. Desmond might show me attention,
and she would be pleased. She was quite glad when Mr. Ryde--well--when
he made himself agreeable to me."

"From all you told me of him, he must have made himself _dis_-agreeable.
I'm perfectly certain I should hate Mr. Ryde, and I'm equally sure I
should like Mr. Desmond. What did he say to you, darling, when you
refused to meet him even with _me_?" She lays great stress on this
allusion to herself.

"He said I might do as I chose, but that he would meet me again, whether
I liked it or not, and _soon_!"

"Now, that's the lover for _me_!" says Kit, enthusiastically. "No giving
in, no shilly-shallying, but downright determination. He's an honest
man, and we all know what an honest man is,--'the noblest work of God.'
I'm certain he will keep his word, and I do hope I shall be with you
when next you meet him, as I should like to make friends with him."

At this moment it occurs to Monica that she never before knew how very,
_very_ fond she is of Kit.

"Oh, well, I don't suppose I _can_ see him again for ever so long," she
says. But even as the words pass her lips she knows she does not mean
them, and remembers with a little throb of pleasure that he had said he
would see her again _soon_. _Soon!_ why, that might mean this
evening,--now,--_any_ moment! Instinctively she lifts her head and looks
around her, and there, just a little way off, is a young man coming
quickly towards her, bareheaded and in evening dress.

"I told you how it would be," says Kit, in a nervous whisper, taking
almost a bit out of poor Monica's arm in her excitement. "Oh, when I
have a lover I hope he will be like _he_."

Her grammar has gone after her nerve.

Monica is silent: some color has gone from her cheeks, and her heart is
beating faster. It is her very first _affaire_, so we must forgive her:
a little frightened shadow has fallen into her eyes, and altogether she
looks a shade younger than usual: she is troubled in spirit, and
inclined to find fault with the general management of things.

After all, she might as well have gone to the river this evening for
what good her abstinence has done her: the poverty of