ht to expect, in
sudden storm, and wind, and lightning, but first in soft light drops,
and then in a perfect downpour, that bursts upon them with passionate
fury.

As they are standing beneath a magnificent beech, they get but a taste
of the shower in reality, though Desmond, seeing some huge drops lying
on Monica's thin white gown, feels his heart smite him.

"Here, take this," he says, roughly, taking off his coat and placing it
round her shoulders.

"No, thank you," says Miss Beresford, stiffly.

"You must," returns he, and, to his surprise, she makes no further
resistance. Perhaps she is cowed by the authority of his manner;
_perhaps_ she doesn't like the raindrops.

Encouraged, however, by her submission to a further daring of fortune,
he says, presently,--

"You might have given Cobbett a turn, I think, instead of devoting
yourself all day to that egregious ass."

"He prefers talking to Hermia. I suppose you don't want me to go up to
people and ask them to be civil to me?"

"Some other fellow, then."

"You would be just as jealous of him, whoever he was."

"I am not jealous at all," indignantly. "I only object to your saying
one thing to _me_ and another to _him_."

"What is the one thing I say to you?"

This staggers him.

"You must find me a very monotonous person if I say only one thing to
you always."

"I haven't found you so."

"Then it--whatever it is--must be one of the most eloquent and
remarkable speeches upon record. _Do_ tell it to me."

"Look here, Monica," says Mr. Desmond, cautiously evading a reply: "what
I want to know is--what you _see_ in Ryde. He is tall, certainly, but he
is fat and effeminate, with 'a forehead villanous low.'"

"Your own is very low," says Miss Beresford.

"If I thought it was like _his_, I'd make away with myself. And you
listen to all his stories, and believe them every one. I don't believe a
single syllable he says: I never met such a bragger. To listen to him,
one would think he had killed every tiger in Bengal. In my opinion, he
never even saw one."

"'Les absents ont toujours tort,'" quotes she, in a low, significant
tone.

This is the finishing stroke.

"Oh! you _defend_ him," he says, as savagely almost as one of those wild
beasts he has just mentioned. "In your eyes he is a hero, no doubt. I
daresay all women see virtue in a man who 'talks as familiarly of
roaring lions as maids of thirteen do of puppy-dogs.'"

"I don't think maids of th