se could it be at this hour?"

"Yet there is something strange in your manner."

"That is as it should be. On such a night as this, how could one escape
a little touch of that 'moonstruck madness' I spoke of a while since? Go
out yourself, walk through that moonlit garden just where I walked, to
where in that corner over the rays melt into shadow, and try if there be
nothing in it to make your heart beat faster."

"I could do it, and return calm as I am now."

"Then you are no true woman."

"What! must a woman be so foolishly romantic as to tremble in the
moonlight, to be true?"

"Moonlights differ. There is a witchery abroad to-night. Go, and judge
for yourself if there be not truth in my words."

"I can see enough of it from this," says Monica, leaning her bare snowy
arms--from which her loose sleeves have fallen--upon the window-ledge,
and turning her eyes to the pale sky studded with bright stars, "to
bewitch me, if indeed it has the power you ascribe to it."

Foiled in her first effort to send her to Desmond's arms, Kit flings
herself upon the ground beside her, and lays her arms upon her lap and
looks lovingly but reproachfully into her eyes.

"I think you were a little unkind to that dear Brian this evening," she
says.

"That dear Brian will recover from my cruel treatment, I make no doubt,"
says Monica, with affected lightness, though, in truth, remorse is
gnawing at her heartstrings.

"If he does, he will show his very good sense. He loves you: why, then,
do you _flout_ and scorn him?"

In the ancient library below, the young ladies in the novels always
_flouted_ their lovers. Not having the faintest idea how they perform
this arduous task, Kit still adopts the word as having a sonorous sound,
and uses it now with--as she hopes--great effect.

"I do _not_ flout him," says Monica, indignantly. "But what am I to do?
am I to make Aunt Priscilla wretched, then, because of him, and break
her poor heart perhaps?"

"Oh, bother her heart!" says the younger Miss Beresford, with more
candor than decency: "think of _his_ poor heart, if you like, wasting
and wearing away because of your unkindness. If _I_ had a lover, that
is not how I should treat him. I should do anything in the world he
asked me. I should defy everybody in the world for him, and think them
well lost. I should run away with him at a moment's notice if he asked
me. _Now!_"

"Oh, Kit!" says Monica, aghast at all this energy.

"I should